Ugly Aur Pagli

One of the more interesting movie titles I've come across in recent times. This was another movie I'd been looking forward to, though not as enthusiastically as Jaane Tu.... Saturday morning, when Ruchi and I were making our plans to watch it, she happened to read some of the reviews that it got. And as it happened, people had put it down quite badly. But since both of us had been waiting for it and we don't always like the ones that do receive good reviews, we thought we'd go and watch it anyway. We did think of waiting for Aarti's feedback, who was watching it in the morning with her sister, but soon after that we decided we'd still want to watch it even if Aarti did not like it. In any case, I reminded Ruchi, I've never seen Aarti say anything bad about anything or anyone. She never complains.

But you know, if you don't go with the Pyaar Ke Side Effects level of expectation in mind, Ugly Aur Pagli does have a lot to offer. It is, for the most part, one of the most senseless movies I've ever seen. But I still found it really entertaining. It was totally unrealistic, and I could not relate to the characters at all, (which is generally an important factor contributing to how much I like a movie) but I still thoroughly enjoyed myself. I loved the unpredictability of Mallika's character Kuhu. The fact that the two protagonists seemed to be totally unlikely candidates for being soul mates, but eventually turned out to be. The fact that Ranvir Shorey's character Kabir was so madly in love with Kuhu that he'd do just about anything for her, including putting on six-inch heels or riding a bicycle with a missing seat. When Kabir ended up in jail and was feeling frustrated, he screamed "Mummy!" (I found that so completely adorable!). And the next morning, after he got to go home, he was beaten up by his mom with a sandal. It seemed to me that he was probably better off in jail than in the custody of the mother he was so fervently remembering. When Kuhu and Kabir split up, Kabir wrote down their love story, giving it a happy ending. I liked that idea. Maybe I'll do that sort of thing some time. Maybe that will be the novel I've long been planning to write.

I found everything about this movie a little odd, but I found it all so adorable. In the last eight years Ruchi has probably told me eight hundred times that I always find the odd stuff (and the odd guys) adorable. But that's the interesting stuff. I think Mallika and Ranvir are a slightly odd couple, but then, so were Mallika and Rahul Bose. Both these combinations turned out great.

All in all, this was a nice movie. Don't set any expectations, expect the unexpected, and you'll enjoy this one.