Aashayein - Review :

Overall Rating: 1.75/5

First it was Mani Ratnam who dropped a ‘Raavan’ in the minds of innocent moviegoers and dampened all the reputation he has earned over the years. Now another respected filmmaker Nagesh Kukonnor, with his latest offering has proved his potential to direct films that are very likely to kill all Aashayein from him, present and future.

Rahul (John Abraham) earns an insane sum of money from gambling and being the happy that he is with his life, decides to marry his girlfriend Nafisa (Sonal Sehgal). Not the best time when one has both money and honey, but Rahul unfortunately discovers that his addiction to smoking has left him with lung cancer and three months of lifetime. Another night and he leaves a sleeping Sonal with most of the money while carrying his favorite poster of Raiders of Lost Ark with him. He finds a way to live his remaining life in what you could describe as a rest home for terminally ill patients.

Aashayen started with the outlook of a brilliant movie. It completely soaked me emotionally in the first forty minutes of the movie but the senselessness with which the movie changed gears to absurdity took away all the shine of the earlier forty minutes. The dreams and tales of Indiana Jones, the improbability of the hospice, a God-like child Govinda (Ashwin Chitale) and the speed at which Rahul juggles between being a healthy glam fellow and a sick patient – didn’t go well with the theme of the movie. Frankly, the purpose of including a character like Govinda could have been for better reasons. And the body language of Madhu (Farida Jalal) neither belonged to a once-prostitute nor a patient suffering from AIDS. I object. The saving grace was the chemistry between Rahul and the Padma (Anaitha Nair), a nutty and zippy 17-year-old cancer patient though the relationship between them was explored in a very cliché manner.

Aashayen tried matching up to ‘Anand’. One could clearly see reflections of Anand in few scenes of the movie. Critically speaking, Aashayen was like Abhishek Bachhan’s American accent in Delhi-6. When spoken from my heart, Aashayen could have been a much better film. There were certain scenes during which i could feel the warmth of tears on my cheeks. The one scene where a patient requests the nurse to stop the artificial breathing equipment is an emotion that requires enough pain to believe in.

Characters like Partha (Girish Karnad) added nothing to the movie except redundancies. John Abraham was actually very good and better was Anaitha Nair but no one was best in the movie. The music by Salim-Suleiman is soothing but easily forgettable.

At the end of the day, good acting, serious theme or a proficient director cannot compensate for the dissatisfaction of watching a badly done videotape. I would recommend Aashayein only if you promise yourself of having no expectations from the movie.