Swades- Movie Review

As the name indicates this is another one of patriotic movies which seem to be the flavour of the day. After Lagan, Gadar, Hero, Refugee, Lakshya and many more movies, I was apprehensive about the merits in spending 3 hours in the theatre bombarded with jingoisms by some deluded protagonist(Lagan excluded). How wrong I was, not only were the dialogs low on rethoric the movie did not slip into the usual rethorical relm of 'India is the best, the rest are but a jest'. It was refreshing a movie that didnt potray the chiched and outdated view, 'pardes me paisa mil sakta hai, magar hamara sanskar nahi'. I was sick and tired of such cliches and wary when Swades threatened to go down that path, just then SRK sprang a suprise and told the truth plainly, 'Each country has its own culture and no one culture is good or bad and its ditasteful to be judgemental'. Also the lack of customary villian to bash , verbally chastice and significantly to grapple with to win the heroine, infused a breath of freash air to the movie. The songs went soft on ear drums at the same time fast paced setting the toes taping. The lack of mini skirts(de jure now a days in Bollywood) make swades stand out in sharp contrast with its contemparies Musafir, Aithraz and even Hungama. SRK gave a polished performance that it expected of him nowadays, Gayatri was too glamarous for a village girl albeit a educated one, though she tried hard her performance gave a feeling she had overdone it-real life personalities would never do it that way.

But Swades is after all a bollywood movie and to do justice to that fact it does have these un eartly moments. The building of a hydroelectric power generator scenes cannot and I stress cannot be digested by an engineer and the fact that my neighbor was a electrical engineer made matters worse. Also the scene where Ravana in the ramlilla play get a bow out of thin air sent my ribs tickling much to the discomfort some parsi views sitting around me.

All said and done taking the big picture into cognisance Swades is a must see for movie goersm especally those who are agast at the quality of most of other bollywod movies

Rating 7/10