Though it's a bit late in the day, please please let me say my piece on the Rang De Basanti versus Lage Raho Munnabhai saga. The dust has settled and each publisher--print and broadcast-- has bankrolled some serious surveys of about 100-odd persons each to let us know which is the better film. My problem is neither the surveys nor the air-headed reviews seem to make sense to me.
In my mind, there is no comparison. The choice is clear. Neither deserved to go to the Oscars. If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to choose between the two, I would go for the Munnabhai sequel. There is simply no question of choosing RDB, even if you shove that bullet into my head.
RDB is much like Rakeysh (is that right?) whatever's previous film, Aks, in the sense that you can't make any sense of it. I couldnt fathom why Amitabh kept swooning so articulately and Raveena Tandon's face kept booming back and forth in the aforementioned disaster. The story went zig-zag and you'd probably miss the story if you so much as blinked.
Ditto RDB. What the heck were these five kids doing? Can life be as simple as to permit verbatim replication of a brave act from the past? The idea itself is insane. The track seemed to run ok (ya, just ok) till the Amar Jawan Jyot scene. Then, it simply twirled, twisted and knocked you out of your senses. Suddenly, there was mayhem, cops went slanging and slamming everyone around and Saif's sister decided enough is enough, so murder the minister. The plot sickens and a new age Bhagat Singh is born. Ufff!! So much for ingenuity! And worse, all the kids die in what looked like an alien country but to help us all leave the cinema a little less heavy hearted, they recarnated themselves and sang songs. How can ANYONE identify with this gobbledygook? True, we have our atrocities, our excesses and gore. But this went beyond that. It was stupid, didn't help us feel sorry for the country or for ourselves. This was someone purging his hallucinations on an unwarned public.
I remember coming out of the movie feeling zapped. Whatever happened to common sense? There is something wild and bizarre about this man's movies, which is fine. What I can fathom much less is the crowd hysteria over this non-plussing movie.
Munnabhai is well-made, sensible and sweet. But certainly not Oscar material. Now, had they got someone else in place of the hero, maybe... ;-)