August 4, 2007

Partner

Title: Partner
Year: 2007
Cast: Salman Khan, Govinda, Katrina Kaif, Lara Dutta

I love Salman- always have. His cheap, lecherous ways are simply a integral part of his charm, and appreciated and anticipated eagerly by all Salman-lovers!

Partner is a movie you would only see if you were either a Salman-fan, or wanted to reminiscence about the bygone days of the Govinda-David Dhawan movies. Its not bad- but its a bit painful to note that basically the movie is a copy of Hitch (2005)- to the extent that at times, even the dialogues are translated sentence by sentence.The plagiarism is especially disturbing since it is so deliberate and extensive. David Dhawan has made a lot of original cinema- there is no reason why he cant give us more of that!

Sallu is the Love Guru to Will's Date Doctor, while Govinda does Kevin James. Govinda gets Salman to tutor him to get Katrina, while Sallu finds himself head-over-heels in love with Lara, a single-mom. Do they get their girls? Of course, but not before over 2 hours of insanely nonsensical jokes.

It was OK time-pass- here is what I like:
1- Rajpal Yadav is kinda fun as Chota Don, a spoof on Sharukh as Don. He zips in and out of the movie in short vidushak takes, mostly interacting with Lara, who plays a journalist after him for a photo for the newspaper she works for. His scenes are perhaps the only truly original component in the movie, and accordingly duly appreciable.
2- I enjoyed the movie's easy portrayal of Lara being a single-mom without excuses, which is rare in a Bollywood movie. We are never really told if she is a divorcee, has chosen to adopt or simply has a child out of wedlock- I am glad we are not provided some strained reasoning- thanks David!

You wont miss a lot if you miss this movie- see it only if you have a spare couple of hours!

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