A gushing yet defensive post about Jaan-e-Mann

so wish I could begin this post by saying I loved Jaan-e-Mann without reservation and recommend it to everyone unconditionally. For a solid one-and-a-half hours, Shirish Kunder’s directorial debut is a delightful, thoroughly absorbing film. I sank wholeheartedly into its marvelous stage-musical world, the constant self-referencing and clever sight-gags, the gorgeosity of the song “Humko Maloom Hai” and its picturisation, the tributes to Singin' in the Rain, What Price Hollywood? and even the dancing space stations of 2001: A Space Odyssey (yes!), and the performances of Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan and Preity Zinta. (All this was so well done that I was happy to overlook the one sour note in the film’s first half: the unfortunate bit of lowbrow slapstick involving Anupam Kher playing Salman’s midget uncle – with much tasteless punning on the word “bauna”, meaning dwarf.)Unfortunately, after the intermission, the film lost its distinct style (and, crucially, much of its sense of humour), turning into a prosaic story with leaden dialogues and going on for at least half an hour too long. (I know I’ve been saying that a lot recently, but when you’re watching a movie at night in a hall that’s a one-hour drive from your home and you’re mentally geared for it to be over by 10 PM and it goes on till 10.45 and it’s been a long day … trivial though it seems, on such things do our lasting impressions of movies often hinge.)And yet, despite the disappointment that comes from an immensely promising film losing the plot, the good bits were so brilliant I can’t get them out of my head. This is one of those times where I’m grateful I’m not reviewing professionally (especially for a newspaper that demands dumbed-down reviews and offers you just 400 words to be dumb in), because then I’d have to get into the business of evaluation – talking down to the reader, summing the film up in a few lines, explaining loftily why it’s Good or Bad. Writing in this medium, on the other hand, allows me to forget the bad and remember the good, to unapologetically talk about the many things I loved about the film.