Apart from being very rich in all departments such as locations, photography, sets, costumes and lavish production designs, everything else is below average in ‘Bharat’. Starting from acting, direction, story, screenplay, dialogues and music, the audience deserves much better. Who wants to witness the partition drama and refugee camps which have been done to death in Bollywood? Where are the clap-worthy scenes? Why is there no hit music from Vishal and Shekhar?
The film portrays six different time periods of Salman Khan’s life, out of which only the childhood role is played by the child artist and the rest is played by Salman Khan, in which he is highly disappointing. Who wants to see a 70-year-old Salman Khan in 90% of the film?
Katrina Kaif has an ill-defined role which does not suit her. In the entire film, she looks too old and even after spending more than 15 years in Bollywood, she can barely act. Thank God Priyanka Chopra left this film! Disha Patani has only one song and two scenes wearing modern and sexy outfits. She is totally wasted. Who wore such dresses in the 1960s? Sunil Grover who is a comedian, does not have a single scene to make you laugh. Jackie Shroff, Tabu, Kumud Mishra, Nora Fatehi, Shashank Arora and others are fully wasted too as the movie concentrates only on Salman Khan.
Even though the censor certificate bears 167 minutes, the director deleted it by 13 minutes. Hope he had scrapped the full drama only. Action scenes in the movie are a joke. The story is based on a weak sentiment which doesn’t go well with Salman Khan’s fans. In fact, the emotional scenes are too weak and does not touch your heart. From the beginning to the end, Salman Khan is in search of his father and sister, which is extremely tedious to watch. The original version ‘An Ode to My Father’ (2014) was quite serious but in ‘Bharat’, adding the nonsensical drama and low standard of stupid comedy, killed the soul of the film and also made it unnecessarily lengthy.
Director Ali Abbas Zafar claims that the film was first narrated to Salim Khan who praised the script. One wonders how Salim Khan can love this nonsensical and miserable script? His direction is simply boring and full of stupidity, with lifted sequences from ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and ‘Kaala Patthar’ (1979). ‘Bharat’ clearly fails to evoke any patriotic feelings. The National Anthem is forced into the drama for some obvious reasons and it doesn’t go well with the audience. The biggest highlight of this movie is its climax only.
Rating: 1/5
