Parineeta isn’t what one would think it would be. Its worser than what you could imagine. Not only it reminds of many period flicks you have seen before but also makes you feel a copycatwill unleash itself without others needing to point out. Parineeta fails to evoke any emotions with the adapted version of the Bengali novel by Sarat Chandra.
Parineeta has loosely tied characters, a chewing-gum screenplay, fantastic BGMs, superb songs and of course real classy cinematography. It’s probably the cinematography and the art direction that makes people think it’s ‘classy’. Except both camera and theart, it sucks. Just production values and picture postcard shots cannot elevate a film if it fails to invoke any emotion at all. Just because there is an element of love triangle, Parineeta doesn’t become a Saajan. Infact it doesn’t even come close to Minsara Kanavu or KB’s Duet(which was a copycat stuff of Saajan).
The suspense starts right from the beginning when the audience start to figure out what kind of relationship the ‘married woman’ a.ka. Parineeta has on the just-to-be-married Saif. We are confused if parineeta hugs our hero with just lust as the motive or is there an ulterior intention for that. As the suspense unleashes, it’s starts to feel like Sense and Sensibility and reminds us of Kandukondain Kandukondain. The only difference is that the savior Sanjay Dutt is stinking rich whereas Mamooty of KK was just a limping war veteran. While the story takes an interesting turn, if you were to watch it till the end, nothing much happens. It all ends up in a loud ‘n’ lousy climax thats crowns the entire movie, its actual worth. The oldie Rekha is still a vamp and that song clearly was sounding like Hello Mr.Ethirkatchi of Iruvar.
The biggest crib is on the backdrop of the movie. The city Calcutta has got nothing to with this female Parineeta except that the original novel had Calcutta as the city. Just because you can shoot a wide angle focus and blurred shot on the hooghly bridge and just because you show random shots from Calcutta, the movie in no way is concerned with Calcutta’s people. Its just a way of extrapolating a simple girl love story to the city for which there is no relationship. Once you do that, at the end one can give a voiceover, As Parineeta gets married, the city of Calcutta was in a joyous mood. What nonsense !! Now that the director just made the backdrop of the story as 1960’s and Calcutta, what else could he do. Get all DVDs of 1960s and Calcutta relatedflicks and flick the shots. From Hey Ram to Devdas to even our Iruvar, there are tributes to many movies.
Even if you are as objective as possible, Parineeta is a pretentious film and let the Chopras try and make more Munnabhais than these stuff.
kirukkal.com 
17 responses to “Pretentious Parineeta !!”
wow, that review came out of the blue for me. Ive had enough folks watch it and everyone came out ooh-ing about how accurate the character portrayal was, and here you are mashing it into pulp!
Saajan was a good movie. Duet was even better, oh well, am partial to tamil movies esp KB’s – but still to think of Parineeta actually being so bad…
I’ve been wanting to see it but somehow no inertia to pick up the DVD – guess am a little tired of period movies. Too many too close. Stayed clear of paheli and Mangal pandey as well – though I must say the costumes were just plain amazing!
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:-))
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It sounds like some one else has written the review…have u hired an assistant?
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Ravi, 🙂 Certainly not. Ain’t so big to hire others write a review. Wrote it so fast without looking back. Maybe thats why.
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I should add that this is absolutely what the movie deserved.
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I’ve been following your blog for a while now and enjoyed your writing. But I was quite disappointed with this piece. A few points I’d like to make:
– As far as I could see, the “love triangle” is hardly important; more importance was for childhood friends naturally falling in love and taking each other for granted. Comparison to ‘Saajan’ was too far-fetched.
– Comparisons to Devdas aren’t unwarranted; the author of both stories is the same.
– The acting of the lead pair was very good.
– I felt that you had some very set expectations from the movie.
– ‘Parineeta’ is not even the best Hindi movie that released this year, but it’s just a refreshing change from the usual crap.
My 2 paise…..
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After watching both Parineeta and Paheli, I think Paheli was better on all counts.
LG, you know what, this “suspense” was hardly that mainly because this formula is so well known in Indian movies, where everyone is perfectly ideal (as u have mentioned in your HAHK tribute) and there was no way Vidya Balan’s character would go after Saif after she was married to Sanjay Dutt…
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The jazzy song ‘Kaisi paheli..’ in this film (picturised on Rekha) is a note for note copy of a famous Duke Ellington jazz composition from decades ago. So much for Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s (and his music director Shantanu Moitra’s) sanctimonious and hypocritical rants in various interviews about the state of modern film music and how they’re the only true ‘keepers of the flame’…etc
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hmm…
The wall-breaking scene made me LOL, actually!
Now, where was the scene that paid tribute to/flicked from “Hey! Ram”? Just curious.
And even similarity to “Hello Mr. Ethirkatchi” from Iruvar, I suspect comes from the common attempt to invoke appropriate mood of jazz.
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I guess it all depends on ones sensibilities. Some people feel that Parineeta is an amazing movie and say all good things about the movie. Some others feel that the movie is rather boring and is not worth all the good reviews.
It is just like some movies getting mixed reviews from audiences – Kannathil Mutham ittal, Iruvar, Adhu oru Kanaa kaalam, Chidambarathil oru Appuswamy for instance. Not that they are bad movis, they just do not appeal to everybody the same way. They just do not make sense to some while it is classy, sensitive and good cinema for some others.
Honestly, seeing the promos, choice of actors of Parineeta, I somehow assumed it to be a boring movie and never bothered to watch it. I still havent watched it to say whether I liked it or not.
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Hahahahaha….That is a review ? Plssssssssss…Of course nobody put a gun on my head and asked me to read your pieces but when ppl like you are featured in well read magazines as commendable bloggers, then there is something seriously wrong with this world. For one, english is not your forte. Secondly, you are so obviously biased towards certain languages. Minsara Kanavu, by any stretch of imagination, is not even a movie leave alone a good one. To call Parineeta a picture post card with no emotions and compare Minsara Kanavu more favorably simply shows how out of depth you are with movies and reviewing. Sometimes it makes sense to write an article and then sit back and put urself as a reader and see if it makes sense. I would seriously recommend that you try it out. And lastly, LG, adulation is a very dangerous thing. It makes one complacent and hampers progress and this is exactly the trap that you are falling into thanks to your fan following. Scratching backs only gets u thus far, after that its all merit. Ask yourself how good you are 🙂
Dho da ennoda 2 anna…
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Randramble, When you said the acting of lead pair was good, I don’t agree with that.
May be as you said we had similarities as devdas because of the writer. Whats your take on Black and Swades. We could stike an interesting conversation after that.
Anti, you are right about parineeta’s character. but half the way through the screenwriter must ahve been confused what to do with her character.
Zero, So did you like the movie ? I don’t think they seemed like tributes but those classy shots seemed to have been inpisred. especially saif on the piano while sanjay and vidya balan making love.
Vee-jay, You are right and its true for all movies irrespective of language.
Netrikann, Cool stuff man. Keep them coming.
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Not sure if we should have a prolonged discussion. Anyway…
Black:
Bhansali was a bit too obsessive and the movie was “too inspired” from The Miracle Worker. Movie was good overall though and certainly far better than Devdas.
Swades:
I wasn’t sure if Gowariker was fully sincere. Shah Rukh was better than most of his other movies.
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lazy, whatever appeal the movie had owes it to the music, cinematography, art direction AND the story itself!!
I think Sarat da’s was a beautiful story of the innocent relationship between 2 neighbours and the dimensions it grows through. I personally dont think Saif did enough justice to his complex character. Vidya was beautiful and competent. Sanjay Dutt was a massive mistake. And the climax “Thod shekar thod” was as intolerable as the LordKrishna-Tuffy-Madhuri relay race in HAHK.
The movie failed to do justice to the theme – that of the loss of faith in a beautiful relationship and the vicisittudes of love, anger, jealousy and the role these emotions play in painting distorted pictures of situations.
The crucial scene is when Girish points out to Shekar what he has lost – but Dutt and Khan royally screwed that one.
I read the tamil translation of this in a magazine called “Pudhiya Paarvai” and was fascinated at that time. I had imagined Kamal, Rajni and Sridevi as the cheif characters(watch Sridevi in Johnny for justification of this). So naturally Khan, Dutt and Balan disappointed me 🙂
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Also, as far as I remember, Shekhar’s father is not the out-and-out 1960’s bollywood father-villain as the movie portrays it to be. He is just an opportunist business man, who actually has no scheme in mind when he originally donates money to Balan’s uncle – a grey-shaded character rather than the out-and-out black scheming shylock that the movie portrayed.
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The review sounded like there was some bone to pick. Perhaps hit a nerve? Not sure what … but certainly sounded like a huge chip on the shoulder.
Movie wasn’t a masterpeice, but given the Hindi movies out there, it was refeshing to see that emotions can be expressed with clothes on, and that they can be taken off when the time is appropriate!!!
Anita
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i thought the movies was great and that vidya balan did a great job. that girl can portray so many emotions in her eyes alone though i thought the ending could have used some improvement though, right?
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