Product Details

• Actors: Anil Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor, Sushmita Sen
• Directors: Dharmesh Darshan
• Format: NTSC
• Subtitles: English
• Studio: Eros
• DVD Release Date: February 25, 2005
• Run Time: 149 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B000MD1IVU
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #430,755 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Indan Male Critics Ashamed Of This Movie!, August 31, 2011

By 

G. T. Bysshe (San Francisco Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bewafaa (DVD)

Here is what some Indian critics had to say about this movie (wiki):

"Hindi cinema at its worst; "our" cinema pulled back to the stone age, vs. B.R.Chopra's bold and progressive 1963 film; glamourous melodrama with no semblance of reality, [soap]; houses, stairs [Awara]cars, climax a let down; Kareena: rhetorical posturing, plastic roses, nowhere do you see nurturing which is why she married in the first place [compare Karisma in "Zubeidaa"]; Anil Kapoor wasted; Akshay Kumar mouthing lines [a simple man]; Manoj Bajpai dramatic actor gone awry; film will have to rely on patronage of the ladies mainly to leave a mark..."

Sounds remarkably like my review of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's remake of Devdas vs. the Bimal Roy version, and me talking about anything made by Bhansali...

Did Americans complain about William Powell and Myrna Loy parading around on screen in drunken luxury while people were lined up in the streets in bread lines in the 30's? no..

Did American musicals ever have anyone really do anything thespian that would interrupt the aesthetic authority of the musical numbers? no.

Thing is, I am not a lady, I bought this movie because I began to be a Kareena Kapoor fan. I had seen her fan page on-line and she was all dolled up and I thought, "is this how Indians really see her?" I had liked her in Mani Ratnam's "Yuva", so I started buying her films, and this was one of them.

I liked this picture- it gave me plenty of views of Kareena consistent with this genre of film- beautiful head shots, numerous displays of her in different saris...(this movie (Shemaroo) looked great on the large flat screen even though not bluray.. turn down the color though -10).

Despite my film viewing history, I can't watch Shyam Benegal all the time- not all the movies I watch will be by my favorite directors...I watch Indian movies for what is Indian about them, and there is a lot about Indian movies that is like no other cinema on the planet.

Bewafaa (engl: unfaithful) informs me and at the same time it is a genre movie, which means that some things are already decided with the audience, such as songs, outline drama, and representation of the filmi stars in all their cinematic presence. On does not expect "reality", "drama".

There are at least three great musical numbers in this film. Manoj and Shamita Shetty were over the top- I could even hear the sweet coy musical speech of Lata's voice over for Zeenat Aman in Yaadon ki Baaraat (1975). Akshay's last number was also impressive-even more zany than Manoj and Shamita- a huge rock stage production with at least two dozen would-be Pointer Sisters- 12 black and 12 white!!

If someone is ashamed of the representation of riches in Indian cinema, its mostly a taste problem (I have my own too- like why does everybody who has money look like an over indulgent ego-centric Westerner?? To remind Indians that they know better?)

I figure Indian movie makers do this so as not to show something specific that might offend someone- that the audience can see that the actors on screen are both them and not them at the same time.

Raj Kapoor took issue with Satyagit Ray unwillingness to say that he was an "Indian" filmmaker. This s the root of it isn't it? Wanting to make a film worthy of the nation- without offending anyone or giving a view of something people would rather not look at...but I really wouldn't say this film ever wanted to be a film for the nation- its just a B-Film to satisfy peoples' desire to go to the movies, with some Hindi family philosophy thrown in.

O.K. the ending was messed up- Kareena's character seems a little blurry, but the intent was clear. What was missing was a final round-up scene, Shakespeare style, that resolves all the actors. They only resolved Akshay, which made him seem like the most important person in the movie, when in fact the director simply overestimated the impact of Kareena's last scripted scene as though her character was already complete.