I don’t know why you say goodbye I say Salaam Namaste

Oh what a nice evening! Got some biryani from the take-away, and Salaam Namaste.
I think this film has my favorite screen-shot of Saif to now: And I love Saif. and Preity. and Arshad! I didn’t know he was in it, squee! Was just thinking of how I have to re-watch Kabul Express and get me some Arshad Warsi-fixes, turns out he’s in this lovely film that I happened to find at the library today.

The story is nice (and predictable). Boy meets girl (or doesn’t), they fight and fall in love. So far so good. The interesting thing is how the film doesn’t stop at this point, but goes on and shows that people grow in a relationship, although some people take more time than other.

Another thing I found interesting was the two different kind of relationships that were shown: the more modern kind but still romantic one of Ambar and Nikhil, and the so much more romantic and maybe more traditional of Cathy and Ron. The relationship of Ambar and Nikhil seemed to be a mixture of modern – they live together but aren’t married -, and romantic – they move together, although they barely know each other. Ron’s and Cathy’s relationship is more romantic (they meet and marry immediately), and – I’m not sure about this! – somehow seemed more traditional in that they married before they moved together, and before they had sex. Ambar who isn’t married gets pregnant.
Up to now, it was Nikkhil who tamed Ambar.
That’s when the film becomes more predictable and the question of who tames whom is reversed. Suddenly it is Nikhil who gets some kind of Angst and doesn’t want all the responsibilities (yada yada yada). The dialogue where he tells Ambar to “kill it” is absurd. Yeah, if I want someone to get an abortion, I’ll say “kill the baby”. Definitely.
The rest if predictable, although I wouldn’t have predicted the slapstick in the delivery room. Erm… it was pretty uncool.

I liked:

• that the australian girl Cathy got married before she got pregnant, and that the indian girl (Ambar) actually didn’t want to marry
• Saif:
• Saif.
• Arshad.
• Preity!  So good to see another Preity-film after JBJ last weekend!
• the fights between both Cathy and Ron, and Ambar and Nikhil
• how the relationships were shown – not all romance, but a little hue of reality.

I didn’t like the slapstick scenes at the end. I think they’re the only thing that really put me of, and it didn’t fit the tone of the film. Oh, and Preity had the most ridiculous baby belly I’ve ever seen in a film.

It’s not the best of the best, but it’s definitely nice and one of the films that you can see when you don’t want to watch football like the rest of the country. I need to show it to my friend who says “this is a really modern bollywood film” whenever they kiss and talk about sex!