Om Shanti Om

So the movie I'm reviewing today is Om Shanti Om. This is definitely my favourite movie so far and may very well become one of my favourite movies ever. Just to a give a little background info on the movie, it stars Shahrukh Khan and Deepika Padukone.

When I was first selecting Bollywood films to watch, I'll admit that I was a little clueless. I knew very little about the actors and actresses, directors etc. It's only been a few weeks since I started learning these things, so I in no way claim to be proficient in my knowledge of Bollywood. That said, I certainly believe I have improved from my naive idea that if someone was talking about a good Bollywood actor it must be Shahrukh Khan since I didn't really know anyone else. For this reason, I particularly selected this movie because it starred Shahrukh Khan, but if you saw my last blog post, I have become aware that there are other factors that I need to check for when selecting a film.

This film was voted the no.1 Bollywood Box office hit in 2007 (Boxofficeindia). It has been nominated for and won so many awards that it would be impossible for me to list them all. If you would like to see a full list click here.

Om Shanti Om is a story about struggling actor Om (Shahrukh Khan) who is besotted by the world famous actress Shanti Priya (Deepika Padukone). Set in the backdrop of the 70s Bollywood it depicts the story of how Om tries to win his love Shanti only to find out that she is already secretly married to the successful producer Mukesh (Arjun Rampal). Devastated, Om tries to move on, but one night, as he is passing by the local film set he sees Mukesh lock Shanti in the film set and set fire to it. Om attempts to save his love, but is unsuccessful as he himself loses his life. The film then shows as Om, is reborn as Om Kapoor, the son of a successful Bollywood actor. As Om remembers the events of his past life, he vows to avenge himself and his love.

This may sound like a horror movie, but I can assure you it is not. The film is the perfect combination of comedy, romance and suspense in the right quantities. Upon further research I found that this film was also meant to parody Bollywood cinema.

The acting was fantastic. The actors in particular; SRK was the perfect actor for Om, the lovely Deepika and Arjun fit the character of the evil yet drop dead gorgeous villain perfectly. Apart from the acting, I thought that the clothes were amazing. I have never really been much of a fan of sarees, but Deepika was always wearing so many beautiful sarees that I believe my opinion of them has changed. In particular, I loved the black saree she wore in one particular scene. Here's a picture of it:

However, I can tell you for certain that my favourite part of this film was the dancing. This is perhaps the best musical sequences I've seen in any Bollywood film. There were two in particular. The first is an all star cast with nearly all the Bollywood stars. If you don't know all the Bollywood star's very well, this youtube video annotates each star as they come on screen. When I was trying to find this clip on YouTube I saw a comment which made me laugh that said that watching this video made them want to throw a huge Indian party and I couldn't agree more.This song will literally make you want to get up and start dancing too!

Also, if you watch closely, you may be able to spot a few references to other films. I only found 2, Urmila Matondkar's Rangeela dance moves and SRK's and Kajol's handshake and nose poke from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Let me know if you find any others!

The second dance sequence was from the final scene. Don't watch this if you haven't seen the film because it is a spoiler. This is perhaps one of my favourite dance sequences ever. There are English subs for both videos if you, like me, are unable to understand Hindi.

Overall, I think this is perhaps one of my favourite films ever and if I could only recommend one film to you, this would be it. It is the ideal Friday night movie.

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