Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar (2011) Movie Review

Release date: Nov 11, 2011
Genre: Drama, Musical, Romance
Starring:  Ranbir Kapoor, Nargis Fakhri, Shammi Kapoor, Aditi Rao, Kumud Mishra, Piyush Mishra, Shernaz Patel
Music:  A R Rahman
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Run Time: 170 mins
Length: 4377 mts
Reels: 18
Censor Certificate: U/A
Watched at Screen 3 (c-6) Prasadz, Hyderabad

After successful hits like Socha Na Tha, Jab We Met and Love Aaj Kal. Imtiaz Ali is back with a Musical saga of musician Jordan (Janardhan Jhakar) who is a sort of born and bought up with Guitar in his hand.  But he misses the feel in the music what his Inspiration Jim Morrison has. At that time his lone well wisher (Kumud Mishra) makes him realize that

“One must experience SORROW of a broken heart to produce truly GREAT music”.

Listening to it Jordan tries to flirt rich Kashmiri girl Heer (Nargis Fakhri). How they get together and hell breaks loose gets them apart. How he transforms from naive to Rock star in Show biz is the remaining storyline.

Ranbir Kapoor showcases his best performance till date in Rockstar, he just Lives in the role. His attitude and innocence just touch everyone who gets going with the character. Nargis Fakhri is one of the feeblest parts in the movie. She just destroys the beautiful moments with her lack of acting efforts. its graceful to watch Ranbir and Shammi Kapoor together on the screen, Just loved it. Kumud Mishra gave controlled performance as a well wisher to ranbir. Piyush Mishra and Aditi Rao were good. Imtiaz Ali focuses more on the main leads so there nothing much to do in the flick for the other characters.

Imtiaz Ali continued his experiment with scripts and storyline with Rockstar. His strong efforts to make a musical saga of a Rockstar Janardhan Jhakar is pretty simple like Happy go Lucky guy – Flirts Girl – Breaks apart– Turns Rockstar, here much more he can add to that check list. The narration of the film is slow. The screenplay should have been more interesting. Direction is adequate. His layered screenplay confuses audience in regular intervals, but it still holds the attention and makes everyone sit till the end.

The Full credit here must be given to the Magical Musician A.R.Rahman and Cinematographer Anil Mehta for giving their full best efforts to this project. Especially A.R.Rahman for giving the soul to the movie with 14 fantabulous songs.  Songs were just absolute treat to ears. Each and every song increases the movie graph. Cinematographer Anil Mehta was at his best. The way he canned the beautiful sets and exotic locations in the film is commendable. Dialogues were good in parts, could have been lot better. Editing by Aarti Bajaj could have been crispier as the movie has Lags a lot in-between which makes audience miss the feel.  Not but the least the choreographers who given the best movements to the ARR tunes. Eros International, Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision made this film on a lavish scale. The film looks pretty rich and colorful.

Rockstar first half works well; but the second half flies off the rails. The climax could have been better, only if it would had ended on the stage. The plus points of the film are A.R.Rahman music, Anil Mehta’s Cinematography, Choreography, Ranbir Kapoor and Production Values. The minus points of the film are zigzag screenplay, over melodramatic narration in the second half, Nargis Fakhri’s disappointing effort, and Editing.  Regardless of all these, you can watch this film for two reasons: 1. Ranbir Kapoor’s rocking performance and 2. for the epic sound track by A R Rahman.