What is wrong with Milind Soman?

Ronjita Kulkarni

Films are meant to entertain. By that yardstick Pyar Ki Dhun doesn't quite measure up.

You could argue that it has a weak script or the editing is shoddy. But what is astounding is that the film has no story to begin with. It begins with a village belle Priya (Swati) running through the fields, announcing her scholarship to study in London. Her boyfriend Rohit (Milind Soman) who is afraid he may lose her once she makes it to foreign shores, forces her into an engagement.

In another part of India, Nisha (Hena) doesn't want to go to London. She feels her stepmother (Smita Jaykar) wants to get rid of her. She can't have her way, though and is forced to leave. Priya and Nisha meet in London and become best friends. They meet Anita (Anita), and form a happy trio.

Meanwhile, a restless Rohit, consumed with suspicion, heads for London. Priya, by this time, can't bear Rohit's possessiveness and his arrival makes matters worse. Rohit tries to win her back, but she isn't interested.

Nisha then unwittingly gets involved with Mark (Nirmal Pandey), a drug peddler. As it turns out, Nisha's stepmother is actually Anita's biologic mother. Her father (Saeed Jaffrey) refuses to have anything to do his ex-wife, since she had deserted them.

Does Rohit win Priya back? Does Nisha free herself from Mark's clutches? Do Anita and her mother reunite? Watch the film if you want the answers.

The problem is that the film asks all the wrong questions. The story doesn't attempt anything new; even the London locales wear a worn look to them.

The script is like Swiss cheese gone bad --- full of holes and stinks. How else does one account for a villager Rohit haring off to London to see his girlfriend, and then staying back indefinitely? Where does he get the money from, especially with his job of educating children under a tree?

Also, the relationship that Nisha and Mark seems ambigious. Nisha, who safeguards her izzat from Mark one night at a nightclub invites him for coffee the very next morning and then considers him her close friend.

The performances leave much to be desired. Milind Soman did a reasonably good job in his previous film, 16 December. In Pyar Ki Dhun, he simply doesn't live up to his character. Soman appears too suave to be a villager with his accented Hindi and half-baked characterisation.

Newcomers Hena and Swati show potential, but fall short. Hena can't stop sobbing and Swati looks grumpy most of the time. One wonders what Nirmal Pandey is doing in a film like this. He overacts for no reason and one fails to understand the cause for his hyperactivity.

The editing is shoddy, a few scenes are meaningless in this film. An overdose of songs just takes things from bad to worse. Save for Umeede, none of them are noteworthy.

The Dasgupta family debuts with this film --- Samerjit Dasgupta, director and producer, Satyajit Dasgupta, the co-producer, Shobha Dasgupta, the scriptwriter and executive producer, Neena Dasgupta, executive co-producer. And Swati and Hena as the actresses.

This then surely is a case of united we stand, united we fall.