Uuf Kya Jaadoo Mohabbat Hai..! Hindi Movie
"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." This sums up the last and by far the most unpalatable lap of the Rajshris' new romantic musical, when the villain morphs the guileless hero's image in a compromising position, when sex is the last thing on young Yash's mind.
Uuf Kya Jaadoo Mohabbat Hai...takes us back to the arcadian innocence of puppy love in Raj Kapoor's Bobby where young people just wanna have fun, and the birds and the bees can go fly a kite.
The Rajshris deserve credit for returning to the theme of innocent love at a time when Hindi cinema candidly addresses adultery, pre-marital sex and abortion, and where protagonists have healthy sexual appetites.
Yash (Sammir Dattani) and Pari (Pooja Kanwal) strike us as cutely conspicuous anachronisms, out of step with the cinematic definition of man-woman relationships.
Love, according the time-warped Rajshris, is meaningless when fastened to sex. In Uuf Kya Jaadoo, while the young lovebirds have fun, another couple (newcomers Mini Tiwari and Aziz) have sex.
In all fairness the romantic duets are pleasant to watch, thanks to the young pair who are easy on the eyes, fresh-faced and eager to please but never overt in their desire to make an impact.
Also, it's to story writer and director Manoj J. Bhatia's credit that he keeps the proceedings stark simple and straightforward almost to the end.
Boy Meets Girl in a scenic splendour, and for a change, it's the girl who falls head-over-heels in love with the singing dancing desi-romantic Peter Pan...and guess what? The girl's rich Papa (Sachin Khedekar) has no objection whatsoever to the economically mismatched alliance.
For most of the film the debutant director blissfully recreates the idyllic sanitised intimacy of his mentor Sooraj Barjatya 's romances. The young couple steals giggly glances, as the extended family plays Housie (remember the antakshari in Maine Pyar Kiya and the pass-the-pillow in "Hum Aapke Hain Koun").
It's only when the film gets into the mood to morph Yash Chopra's "Dil To Pagal Hai" that you begin to lose patience with the analgesic arcadia of the presentation.
Yash's dancing partner and childhood buddy, played by newcomer Mini Tiwari is entirely modelled on Karishma Kapoor in Yash Chopra's film.
Even the plot details (for example the girl's accident which forces the hero to choose the heroine as his dancing partner) are straight from the other film.
No harm in going back to the successful works of pop art for sustenance and renewal of mainstream traditions in Hindi cinema. Trouble is, "Uuf Ka Jadoo..." doesn't go anywhere.
It celebrates the status quo with a supreme disdain for changing tastes and mutating definitions of cinematic entertainment. While the lead pair smiles coyly at one another as though they were Salman Khan and Bhagyashree from Maine Pyar Kiya, the supporting cast hobnobs daintily over bowls of aromatic 'halwa' and bon-china cups of tea.
If on one level the film's 'innocence' exasperates on another level it's also comforting to watch a film that boldly dispenses with sleaze and smut and talks of love as more than just a four-letter word.
The two newcomers are more watchable than most of the more with-it but less watchable wannabes who queue up for stardom. For a debutant Sammir Dattani is remarkably confident in his dancing and courtship sequences. He'd have made as strong an impression as Hrithik Roshan, Abhishek Bachchan and Shahid Kapur in their debut film, if the material provided had more meat.
Given a less wispy, vehicle Dattani could fill the slot lying long vacant, that of the teenybopper hero.
Alas, the era of innocent love is gone! As a homage to a genre that's now extinct "Uuf Kya Jaadoo..." is a decent enough excursion into a rose-tinted terrain of designer pleasures and pain.
The film is beautifully styled. The background music (Surinder Sodhi), art design (Samir Chanda) and editing are good.
