Ar......yaawn. Review on Armaan

Armaan which means DESIRE. This was one of the most awaited film of 2003, producer and distributors had pinned great hope on this movie. Unfortunately the maiden directorial venture of Honey Irani could not create any sort of ripples in the current bollywood scenario. Had this movie been made a couple of decades ago it would have created a new record.

But now in the year 2003 when everything moves at a certain speed the speed of Armaan is such that even if a viewer goes out to attend some important call on his/her mobile and comes back after 10 minutes he/she can see that the story has not moved ahead and hence it is very easy for the viewer to catch up with the story line. It is a pity that such is the result of the screenplay where two titans like Honey Irani and Javed Akhtar have jointly come out with. Cinematography of Ravi Varman is just superb and Music by Shankar, Eshaan, Loy is hummable and soothing. Nothing great about Choreography by Saroj, Farha Khan and Geeta Kapoor. Dialogues and lyrics by Javed is quite good.

ARMAAN is the story of Dr. Siddharth Sinha (Amitabh Bachchan) who has a Armaan to build a his hospital which will be a state-of-art medical facility centre. Though he has lot of Armaan to build a hospital he does not have necessary funds. He in his hospital is assisted by his adopted son Dr. Akaash Sinha (Anil Kapoor).

Dr. Neha Mathur (Gracy Singh) joins the father and son team as an Anaesthetist and love starts developing between the Anaesthetist and the Junior doctor.

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Scene 2

Soniya Kapoor (Preity Zinta) the spoiled, eccentric daughter of Gulshan Kapoor (Randhir Kapoor) falls in love with the junior doctor. Junior doctor is firm and steady in his mind and goes around with Dr. Neha.

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Scene 3

One day while returning back Sr. Doctor's car gets stuck on the road. While he is attending his car a little boy and his mother are hit by a truck. Sr. Doctor rushes to them and sees that the mother has died on the spot. In a bid to save the son he lifts and starts running in the forest and somehow with great difficulty he reaches his hospital. Result: Sr. Doctor is fatigued and dies of heart attack.

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Scene 4

Now the responsibility of building the hospital falls on the shoulder of the Jr. Doctor as he does not have any way to get necessary fund he decides to marry the spoiled eccentric Soniya.

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Scene 5

Soniya constantly has a doubt and thinks that something is wrong betweeen the Jr. Doctor and the lady doctor and at every given opportunity she yells at the Jr. Doctor and the lady doctor.

Lady doctor plans to marry Dr. Sanjay (Aamir Bashir) who also works in the same hospital. However somehow the marriage plan fails.

In the mean while Lady doctor's mother gets serious and is admitted to the hospital. Lady Doctor calls up soniya and asks for Jr. Doctor, Soniya refuses to either give the message or pass on the call to Jr. Doctor.Result: Lady doctor's mother dies.

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Scene 6

Jr. Doctor now gets wild on Soniya. Unable to bear the anger of her husband Soniya takes her car and drives wildly. Result Soniya's car meets with an accident and Soniya is critical. Husband performs operation on her and saves her.

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Scene 7

Immediately after the operation Soniya is transformed into a completely new and gentle person who tells Jr. Doctor that she is not the right match for him and hands him the signed divorce papers to help Jr. Doctor to lead a happy married life with Lady Doctor.

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It seems the Director and the Story Writer Honey Irani has never bothered about the Armaan of the viewers.

Performance-wise Amitabh Bachchan has given a fantastic performance, especially in the scene when he dies. In many of the scenes Preity has over acted. Gracy looks pretty but has to put some hard work to improve her acting capabilities. Anil Kapoor could have done still better. As far as Randhir Kapoor is concerned no complaints as we all know poor acting is nothing new for Randhir Kapoor.

On the whole this movie should have been released somewhere in 1970's or 80's and not in 2003. Such a story was not expected from Honey Irani who has given us fantastic stories like Lamhe, Aaina, Kaho na Pyaar Hai, Kya Kehana, etc...