Mangal Panday - The Review

I took Friday off from work, woke up early and stood in a loooong queue in front of Urvashi Theatre and bought tickets for First-Day-First Show. After all, my favorite Indian Actor was appearing on screen after a gap of nearly four years. Was all my effort worth the final result i got to see on the large screen? Sad to say, but it most definitely wasn't.
Okay, it is a historical, and we all know how it's gonna end, no matter how much rabble rousing Khan does throughout the movie. But the movie itself is shot so amateurishly, what with innumerable songs that seem totally out of place being inserted at whim, that you wonder why on earth it took them 2 years to film this rot.
For your Information, Khan plays Mangal Panday, a Sepoy in the British Army, and Toby Stephens (of Die Another Day fame) plays Captain William Gordon, who shares a special relationship with Mangal, as Mangal has saved his life when he was wounded in a battle in Afghanistan. Some Kusti fights and drunken revelry later, when you wonder what is happening (Kirron Kher with so much cleavage...C'mon, Be Serious), the infamous catridges laced with cow and pig fat make their appearance. And things go haywire from there. What could have been a taut and interesting part of the movie, becomes a sham with a Holi song in between!
Performance wise the movie rocks, with both Khan and Stephens at their best. Rani Mukerjee is wasted. Amisha Patel has 3 to 4 lines in the movie, but she looks pretty. So much for the big break she has been raving about. Ketan Mehta (director), what is happening? Sardar was much better.
All in all, watch it on a lazy sunday afternoon when you have nothing else to do.