Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage

Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage -- I'm Starting to Like You

MAIN CAST:
Hrithik Roshan -- Rohit
Amisha Patel -- Sapna

BRIEF PLOT OVERVIEW:
Sapna is the sheltered daughter of an Indian criminal, a girl whose cage will be opened (according to her mother) when a "great prince" comes to take her away. Rohit is the obvious prince: handsome, good as gold, and a fluid dancer to boot! And like any good boy, he falls madly in love with Sapna after he spies her in the backseat of a car. Obviously, Baabul is not pleased with Sapna's choice in beaus, considering he's already formulated a match between her and his friend's son Rishhabh.

FILM -- .5/5
I should have smelt the TERRIBLE wafting off of this film in odious waves when they started striking dramatic chords less than a minute in to the movie, but I'm stubborn. I figured, "Hey, I sat through Barsaat, I can sit through anything!" Well, I forgot how painful Barsaat was, and how I'd promised I'd never put myself through that much pain again. AMALL is just plain bad, and not even entertainingly bad. I fastforwarded through a good 30 minutes of stereotypical bad masala stuff, like the obligatory "hero is a sports prodigy" character introduction scene and damn near all of the obligatory "OMFG we have no money in our budget because we spent it all on song picturizations in the Swiss alps" action scenes. I know it's redundant to pick on action scenes in a bad Bollywood movie, but they're SO godawful and make no sense to me. I mean, if you're going to put a hit on a fellow hitman, wouldn't you do the smart thing and kill him quickly and quietly, instead of holding this dangerous man around the neck, dangling him out your car window, and cruising around the city streets? What little plot line actually exists serves as nothing more than a foundation for melodramatic turn upon melodramatic turn. AMALL also features a lot of silly inconsistencies, like in the opening song, when a bunch of bullies are surprised by Rohit's huge posse of friends. If Rohit is so popular, how can it be that these bullies haven't heard of him? I dunno, maybe they just skip class a lot. The costuming is so candy-coated in some parts that it might give KJo's college movies a run for their money, and the choreography can be equally horrendous, though the energy the actors put in to it (::COUGH::hrithik::COUGH::) makes it bearable.

CHARACTERS -- 0/5
Can these actors actually act? I'm sure they can! But AMALL won't prove that to you. Everybody moves and talks like an Indian William Shatner, jerking their bodies around and speaking in jilted phrases as if they're being "intense." In reality, they're just being bad actors. Amisha Patel gets to do a little more than just jerk around. In fact, she gets to do a lot...a lot of crying, that is. She runs from scene to scene with her lip linered-to-death mouth, caterpillar eyebrows, and generally Michael Jackson-esque face all squished up in a constant grimace of pain. She looks nice on the DVD cover, though! Oh, wait...she's smiling, something she really doesn't get to do in the actual movie. No wonder I'm so confused! I actually ended up admiring Amisha's hard work by the end of this film, just because I figured all of that crying must've been exhausting. Hrithik Roshan makes a rather, erm, interesting first appearance in the movie, as we see him headbutt a soccer ball at three different angles. When that shot zoomed out, I instantly knew that Hrithik was cast as little more than eye candy. And he certainly is pretty, with his fresh face, lithe body, and graceful dance moves! Beyond that, however, Rohit is a bland character, and Hrithik obviously knew this from the start, because he instills absolutely no life in to the part. Their chemistry is middling, probably because the relationship as a whole strikes me as being uber-creepy. I'd keep going on about how bad the rest of the actors were, but chances are you're only considering watching this movie because Hrithik is in it, and beyond that, the supporting cast--as previously mentioned--does a really piss-poor job.

SOUNDTRACK -- 2.5/5
I'm ashamed to admit that I actually liked parts of this soundtrack. The first song, for example, is a guilty pleasure of mine, because while it's stupid as all Hell, it's got a really catchy beat, and I'm a sucker for Hrithik twitching his hips. Featuring some cool flutes, "O Re Gori" is very 90s (which is generally a plus when I say it), and I thought it was kind of catchy. I enjoyed "Hawao Ne Ye Kaha," which is apparently a very popular song, so I can't be too far off the mark. The background music is so corny and poorly mixed, it sounds like something a 5-year-old would bang out on her Casio keyboard.

OVERALL -- .5/5
I'm usually a sucker for melodramatic masalas with good-looking actors, fun music, and that charming feeling, but Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage doesn't arouse, excite, or charm me in the slightest. It's just a heap of poorly executed violence, hyperactively picturized songs, choppy dialogue, and bile-inducing performances, and the only reason I give it a half a point overall is because it has a few cute scenes and a decent soundtrack. In fact, it took me a whole night to get through AMALL, because I had to keep mustering up the strength to sit down and watch more of it. Avoid this film at all costs, with two exceptions:
1. you love Hrithik Roshan to the point of obsession, or,
2. you want to commit suicide and need something so mind-numbingly bad it'll make your brain explode faster than a shotgun to the head.

TOTAL SCORE -- 3.5/20 (complete disaster)