Director: Farhan Akhtar
Rating: **
It is once again promos versus the actual product. Dil Chahta Hai, in many ways, blunders along the Aks way—while the ads and 'trailers' give the impression of it being a light, breezy, coming-of-age movie about friendship and angst, the real footage is often dour and slow, with too much of grim and 'gray' lighting. The director is obviously out to make a different kind of film—something in the Bollywood avant garde mould, which combines the early Vinod Chopra, Bombay Boys and Raakh, that old Aamir Khan arty adventure. This is art cinema with the new-age, Hollywood-inspired sensibility, but Farhan Akhtar is Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani's son. The father, of course, has long since retired from serious screenwriting, but the mother had been behind the rise of the '90s marka NRI mush. She scripted quite a few of the DDJSs and the DTPHS. The son's debut, therefore, had to touch base...
