JAAN-E-MANN

JAAN-E-MANN
“Music tera baap bajaayega kya?!”
Shirish Kunder has a fetish for spoofs; and he has amply and ably used that to add a zing to the film. Given all the anomalies, you can’t deny his prowess at storytelling and sense of grandeur on all aspects of the film. A unique pacing, packaging, sequencing and satire dazzle the first half with laughter, surprise and amazement. Every character, scene and minutest aspects come together in perfect harmony. Nice to see an attempt at comedy without PARESH RAWAL! The narrative is very effortlessly and unconventionally told with some good music and lively performances. There are numerous laugh-riots that include whacky takes on all the aspects of the 90’s Mumbai film-emotional dialogues, situational miracles, sandwiching of a song, and of course, uncalled-for-but-now-universally-legal dance! You are almost sucked into believing that you are being a witness to one of the ‘finds’ of the year…
Alas! Only if a maker didn’t have to put customary rituals of done-to-death cinematic jargons in any film exceeding 20 crores, we would have shorter and may be better films. If you want to have a nice time enjoying a fresh perspective on Euclidean love triangles a la Bollywood, watch the first half of the film and leave the theatre in good spirits. Because sitting through the second half may require your mind to function simultaneously in multiple flashbacks (almost like taareekh par taareekh…), being divided over leaving or staying, thinking about the nth way to react to a not-crying-but-trying Salman, the eternally bridal and sob-friendly Preity Zinta, wondering which song is an original Anu Malik, counting the front teeth of Akshay Kumar as an evidential proof of his skills as a comedian, and similar other alternate uses of your shackled time.
Whoever told the director showing a little kid exhibiting more expressions than Salman Khan can actually make a film click?
In times of acute feeling of self-destruction, you tend to contemplate if someone abducted the director after he shot the first half and sent him to the dummy space-ship cum romantic and nostalgic excursion of Akshay’s character, and gave the baton to his much-celebrated and ‘established’ film maker wife. 
But…
But even after all the skull-ripping sitting-through, something does bother you somewhere about some suspiciously ‘good’ element somewhere lost in the hmmm hmmm hmmm devilish mirth or the sudden theatrical lighting in living rooms giving away to lavish Broadway routines or the way the deviation from any point in the story doesn’t make you mind or realize it much or the umpteen tributes made to low-production films of yore or the way even the mushiest of candy floss element fail to put you to sleep.
The songs are a delight except that matrimonial persuasion number, which is a painful reminder of all fake familial filmi shaadi sequences that your already exhausted and pilled brain can conjure up. 
The title theme is infectious and Gulzar’s words get full justice in it especially, apart from Sau Dard(which loses the charm thanks to a I-can-weep-gallons-Salman in the overdose of “we will make you cry” desperation)and the tastefully shot Ajnabi Shehar; unfortunately, some of the picturesque shots have been brutally and comfortably spliced from the songs. Either they hired a barber for an editor or they thought you will be too sleepy to notice that.
A disastrous and unpardonable second half just might make you forget this film soon amidst the dust of ‘commission-earners’.