Salaam-e-Ishq – A never-ending love saga
Quality Score: 4/10
Masala Value: 8/10

Coming from the Karan Johar School of cinema you should expect the movie to be unimaginably long; have nice and grand songs; have a stunning star-cast and preach some message. Well, true to the open secret Salaam-e-Ishq is a loose adaptation of the Hollywood flick Love Actually (2003).

As proclaimed this is the story of six couples all dealing with the common problem of love in its different manifestations – well just five couples for all practical purposes as the Sohail Khan–Isha Koppikar track was an utter waste. It was a crass and cheap comedy track that was totally disjointed and spurious in the film.

John Abraham-Vidya Balan; Akshay Khanna-Ayesha Takia; Anil Kapoor-Juhi Chawla (with the debutant Anjana Sukhani); Govinda-Shannon Esra and Salman Khan-Priyanka Chopra are individuals in various stages of their life facing kinds of dilemmas. Further how the power of love comes together with fate and destiny to cure their maladies forms the basic outline. The screenplay is about how these distinct tracks intersect and finally comes together in one climax sequence. To pick one the John Abraham-Vidya Balan track was the best. It is their tragic story that really goes onto touch your heart and causes a tear to trickle down your cheek.

After four hours, I failed to find any clear message coming from this movie – from the title I figured Nikhil Advani says that true love is the solution for all problems and nothing is impossible when you tread the path of love.

I will confidently refute the merit and quality of the script; maybe it was good in portions here and there. From that perspective, I’m a huge fan of his Kal Ho Na Ho and this one is no where in that league. At the end of the day as an avid fan no lines or sequences stay in your mind. I wonder why these directors’ do not realize that the narration of good stories supported by a perfect screenplay should be as concise, condense and crisp as possible for the viewer to truly relish and cherish the experience – 15 to 16 reels to be specific.

I do seriously salute Nikhil for one thing – he has managed to do what Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra and Farah Khan have not and perhaps cannot do – make a movie without Shah Rukh Khan. For me to see a director make films with different actors shows his versatility and the trust he places in his story/script.

Salman was his usual self, seeing him take-off his shirt and render such ‘pyaar-bhari’ dialogues in the same tone with the same expressions is quite a familiar sight by now.
So far Priyanka Chopra has been paired with every top hero and she just looks good with every one of them, which is a great asset for a lady! Performance-wise, I do still find her artificial at times and will hope she matures with time. In Vidya Balan’s short career, firstly it is rare to bag such heavy and diverse characters in each film and secondly, it is special for she has excelled in these roles with ease. It was fun to watch Govinda’s moves after a while, but I found him a bit loud in a few scenes. Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla gave us polished performances that showed why these veterans were a class apart.

Continuing their consistent run of good albums in the year 2006 Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy impressively score in this one too. As you would expect the songs looks better on screen and to me the title song stands out for sure.

Another multi-starrer made for the NRI and multiplex audiences – watch only for your favorite star or song.

- Varun Prasad