Mausam (2011)

Truly Dreadful Film

A Masterpiece!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Mausam: a timeless love story(2011) is a movie starring Shahid Kapoor as the protagonist Harry & Sonam Kapoor as Aayat.the movie is made by Pankaj Kapoor.Its such an amazingly made outstanding movie.a love saga that will remain on everyone's hearts forever.the movie is about the true love between the lovers that never dies until the end.it shows the development of the character in Harry throughout the movie and his love story with Aayat.they have to get under lots of problems and they lose each other.but finally the lovers reunite.the music is really heart warming.specially the romantic song "Rabba mein to margaya oye" also saj dhaj ke,Ik tu hi tu. Shahid Kapoor delivers a sharp & rock steady performance & its possibly his best performance up to date along with vivah,Jab we met .in the first half he gives a promising performance as the village lover boy.and his charm remains.the second half shows a much matured character thats superbly portrayed.and Sonam Kapoor gives full justice to her role Aayat. she is lovely adorable and everything u could hope for in the movie.the climax of the movie is really well made that completes this marvelous love story.great direction,marvelous performances,and shot it different countries,lovely songs.have to say I have really enjoyed watching the beautiful movie .its a movie for the intellectual movie lovers.and more such inspiring realistic movies should be made.

Let's just cut to the chase here (something I WISH the movie had done): Mausam is a never-ending borefest. I will never be able to recover the 3 hours I spent on this movie, but I will use the next 5 minutes to help you save yours.The movie tried too hard to be an epic. Other movies that tie together themes of romance and religious / political conflict (Bombay for example) do so with force and passion -- Mausam tries to be subtle, which is all well and good, but when you repeat the subtle message for THREE HOURS it begins to be less subtle, and terribly boring. Mausam is an epic case of boredom. If I wrote that sentence 2000 times, and forced you to read it, you will get an idea of what this movie is like. Please save your loved ones from this gigantic wastebasket of a movie.The only redeeming factor in this movie was Sonam Kapoor, who is quite beautiful and does her best to look good while playing an insanely boring character. Shahid Kapoor remains an average actor, but my wife tells me he's very good looking too.

Despite the fact that I am a die-hard fan of the Living Legend, Pankaj Kapoor from almost two decades, I am sorry that I am unable to praise his first film as a director with the same spirits.The major reason for my dissatisfaction from MAUSAM remains its unexpectedly weak script having such strange sequences of co-incidences where the lead couple, suddenly meet each just like that both within India as well as abroad. And the most bizarre sequence among these was the foreign one (Switzerland), where Shahid is sitting in a train and he discovers Sonam standing there alone in the middle of snowy mountains with her packed bags and she is not even standing on the exact Station platform in a very questionable way. In fact throughout the film, they both keep bumping into each other, as if there is someone truly desperate to write their eternal love story from the sky above. At first they meet in Punjab, then Scotland, Switzerland and then towards the end, finally in Ahmadabad again. Particularly the shift from Punjab to Scotland puzzles the viewer hugely as there is no explanation given for that in the film itself.The second big factor which works against the film is its near 3 hours long duration which is too lengthy considering its unimpressive story build-up. The whole first hour of the film says nothing except showing the culture of Punjab with some childishly executed comical moments focusing on a particular sect. Truly speaking, I never expected Pankaj Kapoor making fun of few SIKH characters in his self-directed film quite purposefully. As I felt the entire first half of the film could have been easily wrapped up in only 30-40 minutes which eventually could have saved it from getting so uninteresting and even boring. Post intermission too the story has nothing new to say other than the usual plot of misconceptions and gap of communication between the loving couple which becomes the only cause of their separation.Frankly, in a romantic film, there is a basic requirement that the viewers must feel the love flowing between its lead couple and everyone should be able to relate with their heartbreaking departure from each other. But here, either the proceedings are too dead slow or they just jump from one point to another which never lets the viewer connect with its emotional storyline in the desired manner. MAUSAM is a pure love story of two innocent characters coming from distinctive religions, that's fine. But the entertainment factor remains completely missing throughout the film, which really becomes painful after a while. Neither the AIR FORCE PLOT insertion (which is only included to bring in the KARGIL event), nor the reference of various communal riots, suffered by different countries is able to pull the viewer in. However, the music does give you some soothing moments in this tiring never ending saga but sadly the soundtrack is again not "anything exceptional" from Pritam. As usual I also felt traces of the song "Om Shanti Om" from KARZ in the track "Tashan Mein Rehna".The film is hugely over-length and tends to go on and on with more deliberately created situations in the plot (within a span of time of a decade), where the lead couple meets repeatedly after many long gaps. And one of these absurd co-incidence comes right in the end where they both meet each other once again in the middle of "Gujarat Godhra Riots" all of a sudden. This weakly written and unconvincing climax is also one of the major drawbacks of the film which tries to bring in Shahid as the only Savior Hero to save the Girl in the end and it simply doesn't justify their decade long love story from any angle.Performance wise, both Shahid and Sonam have really worked hard for their respective roles having various shades and character transformations in the script. Shahid is surely better in the second half and looks like overdoing it in the Punjab part of the film. But Sonam is the real winner here since she perfectly underplays her role, exactly as required by the script. Probably this is her best performance till date, contrary to her fashion Diva image in the Industry. From the rest of the cast only Supriya Pathak and Manoj Pahwa register their presence impressively and Anupam Kher simply remains wasted.In the end, I would like to share, that it strongly seems Pankaj Kapoor had only a one line idea before writing the script of MAUSAM, which must have been "A Love Story written around all the major Communal Hatred Events happened in India and abroad in the last two decades." Since he couldn't start with the Sikh Riots in 1984, so he begins from PUNJAB itself, with his Hero mentioning the BLUE STAR movement and its aftermaths in his dialogues. Talking about the homeless issue of Kashmiri Pandits, he then moves into the Babri Masjid Issue, followed by Mumbai Riots, Twin Tower Attack in America, Kargil Warin India and then ending it all within the Gujarat Riots on a positive note.So, giving an extra star for this brilliant thought alone, I wish to give my best wishes to Pankaj Kapoor for his next directorial project, moving ahead of this forgettable first attempt called MAUSAM.

Pankaj Kapoor's directorial debut - that made me have some expectations from the movie. an actor of the pedigree of Pankaj Kapoor, with his understanding of characters, would come up with something fresh and give life to a romantic saga movie - at least that was the hope. But this movie turns out to be anything but that. Its a joke - on the audience by the director and his crew. there are bizarre incidents in the movie, without continuity leaving a lot to be imagined and guessed by the audience. the dialogue's are old and boring. its like an effort is being made to give the movie a whole greater than life image when both shahid and Sonam do not fit onto such epic roles. they both cant act. period. Sonam is giggling most of the time and has this superpower of appearing near shahid out of nowhere be it in Scotland or at a snow covered mountain in Switzerland!! just because the camera pans on the shadows of people talking doesn't mean that its well shot. the leading couple not meeting and expressing their feelings for each other goes on for so long (a decade) that at some point the whole audience gives up. even serious scenes become a joke. there is hooting, cheering and booing by the crowd, in fact the song"ajjeb dastan hai yeh, kahan shuru kahan khatam" seems to be true for this movie. and can someone please explain, even after 2000, why do they not have mobile phones and email ids !!! it gets so painfully slow and melodramatic that eventually one has to get and leave and let the others be tortured. this movie is best avoided and if this is anything to go by, so are future pankaj kapoor movies. this has to be the biggest let down of the year and one of the worst movies i have seen in a long time (P.S. i haven't seen Bodyguard, Ready and the likes)