Dil Ne Jise Apna Kahaa (2004)

What a waste of my time!!!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Makes an amazing start, but the second half is disappointing. Preity Zinta and Salman Khan have a wonderful chemistry, you can literally see the sparks fly!Performances were alright, Preity stood out and grabbed the audience's attention every time, the vivacious role of Pari was very well handled. Salman also did a decent enough job, though this is not one of his best performances. Though I must say he stole the show in the second half. Bhumika Chawla didn't do justice to her role at all. Who is she and who gave her this role?! And who on EARTH thought she could do it!? She had a meaty role but did not execute it well at all. I wasn't impressed.The story is a candyfloss type, very romantic, bubbly, dealing with love/heartbreak etc. But once Preity left nothing took it forward. This could have been done brilliantly, it just needed the right push.Music is gorgeous, seems like one of the only amazing things. Directing and script, were cheesy, but OK.Could have been better!

There are no glaring problems with this film, it just didn't quite cut it for me. The story is not the most creative thing imaginable, and is very predictable. This alone is true of many good movies though. Dil Ne Jise Apna Kaha stumbles by presenting the story poorly... really I think better editing could have helped this film a lot. There are some downright bizarre directorial decisions, too, like a very ill conceived gay character who appears two thirds of the way into the film for basically no reason at all. The film lingers where it could pick up the pace, and some important scenes could be expanded a bit more. I can't really fault any of the acting, although Salman Khan's portrayal of grief gets a little flat and tiresome. Some of the cinematography could have been thought through a little more, in my opinion.The film has a few emotional high points, but overall is not worth the ride.

Atul Agnihotri has done an excellent job for a directorial debut. The first half is brilliant with a completely fresh appeal to it. Salman and Preity's relationship is illustrated beautifully. It is the perfect modern, youthful, romantic marriage. The second half has mostly Bhumika and Salman.Their relationship doesn't make sense. If the audience is supposed to believe that their relationship is based on the heart-thing (you'll see what I'm talking about when you watch the film), that's really dumb. Preity, as always, delivers a marvelous performance. Bhumika, unsurprisingly, is her bland self. Salman, however, is outstanding. His acting has improved by a quantum leap! His scenes are jaw-dropping well-acted. For the first ten months of 2004, I feel he deserves the best actor award for this movie. I've never seen such a talented Salman before. A.R. Rehman gives lovely, melodic tunes, and beautiful background music. Himesh Reshammiya's "Balle Balle" is a nice foot-tapping song.

Bhoomika Chawla and Preity Zinta provided sweet eye-candy in this movie, and there were a number of colourful dance sequences which were quite pretty, but overall I am surprised by the high rating the few voters have given it so far. It would be one of the weaker efforts I have seen this year, and I suppose my main criticism would be the quality of the acting. Apart from the two female leads, a lot of the other acting was not as good as it should have been, and especially a number of the supporting cast were quite wooden at times. Dhani's grandma was quite hammy at times, as were some of Rishab's work colleagues, and even Rishab himself was not as well played as I have seen Salman Khan before, in "Mujhse Shaadi Karogi" for example. Some of his tearful bedside scenes were just a little hard to watch, not because of the pathos but because it wasn't believable. I did enjoy moments of the film, and the dance sequence in the nightclub was very hot, but on the whole I have seen better.