Two summers ago on a humid, thick, hot Sunday afternoon, I nipped into my local for a reduced price matinee of Bunty aur Babli.   While my skin cooled in the frosty theater, my heart raced watching the colorful clothes and capers of Abhi and Rani as they skirted, then ditched, UP for Bombay.   Even without Kajra Re, it was a perfect summer movie: light, sweet and satisfying.

With Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, Shaad Ali has provided the equivalent for the summer of ’07, though with primarily European locations (London and Paris), save for one song picturization in India.

Papa Bachchan – looking like a man running between auditions for Pirates of the Caribbean and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – opens the film, striding around London to Waterloo station with his guitar slung across him like a highwayman’s rifle.  

I gotta’ give it to Mr. B; very few actors anywhere could pull off this appearance at 64 without looking absolutely ridiculous, but he manages to do it.   He’s raffish and cool and winking at us the whole time.   For a man usually so impeccably coiffed and clothed, you get the sense he’s enjoying the alter ego’s long hair, jeans and knee-high boots.

Then we meet the main characters,  both Alvira and Rikki (who like Vimmi and Rakesh before them) spin elaborate stories as they find themselves stuck together for two hours at the train station.  

Alvira Khan (played by Preity Zinta) is haughty, upwardly mobile and fashion forward, working at House of Fraser and hoping for a wealthy and fair (yes, that kind of fair) husband.

Rikki Tukral (AB 2.0) is a bit of a chancer.   He’s rakish, his gold Motorola phone has a ringtone of “Hey handsome” and he wears a large, diamante-studded khanda, but underneath it all, he’s basically got a good heart.   (AB fils is also brand ambassador for Motorola in India.   You can see him with the same gold phone here in NY at  the Guru  press conference.)

The pair seem to be oil and water.   While both wait for their fiancés on the same train, they exchange how-we-met stories, which is how Lara Dutta (Anaida) and Bobby Deol (Steve) make their entrances.   She’s a manager at the Ritz Carlton in Paris, he’s a London lawyer.   Lara has a sophisticated bob.   Bobby is sporting a Mirinda rinse, only a shade or two away from a Malay orangutan.

As minutes tick by, Rikki and Alvira seem to be getting fond of each other.   Uh oh, what happens after the interval?

(By the way, she’s Pakistani, as is Anaida, yet both guys are Indian.   It’s not a big deal here.)

The second half of the story has both a dance-off in Southall and a Kaiser Soze kind of moment, and I won’t say any more so you can see for yourself.

Some reviewers have complained that Preity looks old.   (How old is old and for whom, I’d like to know?   This is the same weekend that thousands pile into darkened halls down south to watch three hours of an aging, balding former bus conductor, who just happens to have a Y chromosome.)   True, at certain angles of certain shots, she does not look great, but I attribute it more to bad lighting, as in many other scenes she still looks bright-eyed and dewy, and she looks more toned in this movie than in Kabhi Alvida.   Moreover, her wardrobe in JBJ  is more flattering.

Lara looks wonderful, in all her incarnations, especially in an aubergine-mauve number at the dance-off.   Her accent (Urdu a la Parisienne) veered off the road into British at times, which was very annoying.

And, Abhi, oh Abhi.   Mallika Sherawat once commented on KWK that she loved to watch him run.   I’d like to second that, and add that I love to watch him walk.   There’s a scene just before the interval that shows him stalking down the train platform, and wow, I could watch it again and again.   Moreover, his comic timing in all scenes is dead on.   He’s got this great hair and moustache/beard/stubble action going on, all to add to his persona as Rikki, and he’s just gorgeous to behold.

Being based in London, you’ll also see some familiar faces from Bend It Like Beckham and The Kumars at No. 42.   One thing that left me feeling vaguely queasy was the representation of Diana and Dodi at the hotel on the night of their deaths.

See it or skip it?

Run, don’t walk.   It’s exuberant and lighthearted, and a wonderful pick-me-up.

AB 1.0 and 2.0 look like they’re having a ball, the clothes are riotous and the music is infectious.

I guess only so much of Mariane Pearl rubbed off on La Jolie.

Yesterday was  the premiere of A Mighty Heart, her and Brad’s biopic about  the Daniel Pearl kidnapping and onscreen slaughter, and the time that the six-months pregnant Mariane spent in Karachi waiting and trying to piece together the reason for Danny’s disappearance.

Cut to NYC, to the event  tied to the  Reporters Without Borders organization, and what happens?  

Angie insists that all reporters covering the event sign an agreement wherein they surrender any right to ask her anything about her personal relationships.   This led to a kerfuffle, with Fox and others stomping off in a huff (and rightly so).

Was she worried someone might say something like “Do you feel uncomfortable  about any parallels between Mariane Pearl’s loss of a husband, and that of Jennifer Aniston?”

This is a first for me tonight: a screening where they were turning people away.   A lot of interest already in the Angelina Jolie, Irrfan Khan starrer A Mighty Heart.  

Review and more coming soon…