"Love’s Sweet Salute"

Movie: Salaam-e-Ishq
Length: 220 minutes = 3 hrs 40 mins
Feedback: Fake, ‘Faltu’ and Filmy

How long can a movie get? How pathetic can acting become? How boring can a feature film be? Salaam-e-Ishq answers all of the above questions more convincingly and satisfying-ly than any other film I have seen to date. It broke records – we actually walked out after the interval.

Why? It’s as if the God wanted to make a really bad film and thought of taking it out on Bollywood. “Inspired” from the classy English film ‘Love Actually’, Salaam-e-Ishq couldn’t go that wrong now could it? Well it did. Sprayed with “un-inspiring” songs and road-side acting, I cannot really point out any positives. Yes the caste seemed very impressive, but figure the following: Vidya Balan is not bad, but is un-pretty and fat; John Abraham is John “too-cool-but-fake-ironed-hair” Abraham; Salman Khan is the epitome of fake + annoying; Priyanka Chopra is fatter and fake-r than ever; Govinda is half decent, but annoying to people who have a general disgust for him; Anil Kapoor hardly speaks a word, but a random, hot, young girl kisses him on the cheek for doing her a small favour, and thus begins a desperate extra-marital wannabe love-affair; Akshaye Khanna is the best over-actor ever and Sohail Khan ridiculously just doesn’t ‘get’ any, but the car in which he is trying to “do it” does fall into his parents’ new house through the roof, but no one dies.

Basically, it was utter bullshit, which was not funny in any way, and this we figured after watching 90 minutes of it, only 130 minutes were left when we walked out. Now if 90 minutes can’t sustain you…

Fine, I guess a story can never, and should never go wrong when it comes to love, but this movie proves even that wrong. As an Aaj Tak reported put it, somewhere within the Fat Lady that is Salaam-e-Ishq, the Thin Lady is waiting to burst out, but the friggin’ flab is too much of an obstruction. I laughed a lot during this Fat Lady. I laughed at the crowd which laughed at the lamest of jokes, I laughed at the ridiculousness of the film, I laughed at Salman Khan for he is one funny pain-in-the-butt and I laughed at myself for paying 35 dirhams to watch this film.

So my advice – don’t you dare watch Salaam-e-Ishq. And if you do, please feel free to walk out whenever you wish. You can enjoy the sheer stupidity of it, but even that gets annoying after some time. To me, this movie is a definition of what not to make and what not to see, so if you are still trying to figure what that is, then it’s a must see.

P.S. It was my sister and my cousin who “forced” me to watch this film.