I'm not Indian but I can claim to have seen about 150 Bollywood-films until today, so I guess that qualifies me as someone with at least a little insight. My insight into the movie at stake, Indra Kumar's "Rishtey", is very brief: It's a bad movie.
I'll dive into the movie a little further. It's the story of a hard working street boxer (Anil Kapoor) who kidnapped his own son because the father of his wife (Karishma Kapoor) wanted the baby and him killed. He raises the boy - and after seven years, he has to face his past and confront the family of his wife again. Standard Bollywood-plot, so to speak. But that's not yet a criticism: Someone like Mani Rathnam could have done a good film out of such a tired story.
I'd also not blame the actors: Anil Kapoor gives a strong performance, the boy does a good job too and Amrish Puri (who plays Karishma's father) acts such roles in his sleep. Karishma herself is less convincing. She stumbles and cries through the scenery and her role is terribly underwritten. She's more a red herring than a character. The better female in the cast is Shilpa Shetty who delivers some humor and a lot of skin.
So who's to blame? Well, where do I start. The music is terrible. It's your typical "angelic Bollywood choir" with its "aaaah aaaaaah" over every emotional scene. Sometimes that works, here it does not. The sound effects are equally bad. Expect sound effects right out of a Batman-cartoon. You can hear all the "swooshs" and "swishs" in the sound track and it's just utterly annoying. The direction: Could this be any more heavy handed? Every event in the movie is forced upon the story (and the viewer) without any ease. The courtroom scenes are cheesy, the divine intervention by Rama is wooden and the final half hour is as fatalistic as possible and results in a unbelievable happy end.
The movie was ruined for me in the first half hour already. After they stole a scene from "Forrest Gump" ("Run Karan, run!"), the boy gives a clumsy speech for his daddy. And it goes on in this direction. The meetings between Anil Kapoor and Shilpa Shetty get equally embarrassing. In one scene, he has to tell her, how beautiful she looks and she cannot believe it. Hellooo? Isn't it, well, obvious that she's very pretty? Ok, I can forgive all that... but then, the movie tries to copy "Over to Top". Why this one? Why perhaps Sly's worst movie? And the title lends itself perfectly for a negative review of this film ... over the top. Well, what I'm trying to say is that once you've seen that it tries to copy that movie, the suspense is gone as well.
I could go on and on. To make it short: It's an embarrassingly heavy handed movie. Nothing flows easily in this film. There are some nice songs (the one after 30 minutes is strangely sexy for a family film) and some nice performances, but that's about it. If you want a "boy wants to live with his daddy"-film, try "Rahul". That one's heavy handed too, but it has more charm than "Rishtey" and comes across less forced. My rating
3/10
I'll dive into the movie a little further. It's the story of a hard working street boxer (Anil Kapoor) who kidnapped his own son because the father of his wife (Karishma Kapoor) wanted the baby and him killed. He raises the boy - and after seven years, he has to face his past and confront the family of his wife again. Standard Bollywood-plot, so to speak. But that's not yet a criticism: Someone like Mani Rathnam could have done a good film out of such a tired story.
I'd also not blame the actors: Anil Kapoor gives a strong performance, the boy does a good job too and Amrish Puri (who plays Karishma's father) acts such roles in his sleep. Karishma herself is less convincing. She stumbles and cries through the scenery and her role is terribly underwritten. She's more a red herring than a character. The better female in the cast is Shilpa Shetty who delivers some humor and a lot of skin.
So who's to blame? Well, where do I start. The music is terrible. It's your typical "angelic Bollywood choir" with its "aaaah aaaaaah" over every emotional scene. Sometimes that works, here it does not. The sound effects are equally bad. Expect sound effects right out of a Batman-cartoon. You can hear all the "swooshs" and "swishs" in the sound track and it's just utterly annoying. The direction: Could this be any more heavy handed? Every event in the movie is forced upon the story (and the viewer) without any ease. The courtroom scenes are cheesy, the divine intervention by Rama is wooden and the final half hour is as fatalistic as possible and results in a unbelievable happy end.
The movie was ruined for me in the first half hour already. After they stole a scene from "Forrest Gump" ("Run Karan, run!"), the boy gives a clumsy speech for his daddy. And it goes on in this direction. The meetings between Anil Kapoor and Shilpa Shetty get equally embarrassing. In one scene, he has to tell her, how beautiful she looks and she cannot believe it. Hellooo? Isn't it, well, obvious that she's very pretty? Ok, I can forgive all that... but then, the movie tries to copy "Over to Top". Why this one? Why perhaps Sly's worst movie? And the title lends itself perfectly for a negative review of this film ... over the top. Well, what I'm trying to say is that once you've seen that it tries to copy that movie, the suspense is gone as well.
I could go on and on. To make it short: It's an embarrassingly heavy handed movie. Nothing flows easily in this film. There are some nice songs (the one after 30 minutes is strangely sexy for a family film) and some nice performances, but that's about it. If you want a "boy wants to live with his daddy"-film, try "Rahul". That one's heavy handed too, but it has more charm than "Rishtey" and comes across less forced. My rating
3/10