London Dreams

Rating : 5/10
Release Date : 30th Oct, 2009
Time : ~180 minutes
Director : Vipul Amrutlal Shah; Writer : Suresh Nair & Ritesh Shah; Music : Shankar – Ehsaan - Loy
Starring : Ajay Devgn, Salman Khan, Asin, Ranvijay, Aditya Roy Kapur, Manoj Pahwa
Didn’t quite know what to make of this one. Interesting premise – that of a serious guy who aspires to be a musician, works towards it all his life but then finds naturally talented, happy go lucky friend coming and usurping his band / fame and even girl (Asin) – is partially undone by v weak ending and a minor descent into the dark side which involves self-flagellation and drugs…


London Dreams is nicely set up by two kids who act naturally and look their parts. Ajay’s family is strictly against music and beat him to stay away from it, while Salman’s chases him to take it up. Ajay is taken to London by a relative after the death of his father but when he realises the same antipathy towards music, he makes a dash for it and starts to live on his own (as an aside, the ‘dash’ takes him from LHR to canary wharf…he clearly missed a career in athletics and maybe his relatives wouldn’t have been so upset about this one ?). As they grow, Ajay’s character becomes a bit too intense and broody while Salman’s retains fun and spontaneity. In fact the highlight of the film was Salman’s plane ride to London and the best parts involved him (I cant believe I’m saying this but its true).

The camera angles bring out the vibrancy of Punjab and London quite well. For a musical though, the quality of songs was quite uneven. Khanabadosh and Man ko Ati Bhavey were very nice, very well picturised but the others are merely indistinguishable background stuff.


Surely there are simpler ways to deal with the situation Ajay faced other than the route he chose ? Surely then, the ending would be different vs the clichéd one shown ? Surely they could’ve given Asin a slightly meatier role – what did she feel about the whole thing anyways? And equally surely, couldn’t they’ve done away with the various implausibilities shown in the film – hushing up a ‘drugs’ case in Amsterdam, being a penniless kid on the streets of London not knowing English being ones which I can talk about without giving the story away ?


Thankfully, the director here focuses on the story rather than the clothes, look and accessories of its stars. So brownie points for that. He makes the characters behave consistently through the film so brownie points for that too. He makes us laugh with Salman which was a good thing. He tries to make us connect with Ajay but then, maybe due to the way I am, I never connect with such introverted dry personalities. And he presents a soppy, implausible ending which spoils it big time.

Still, not a bad effort and lets rejoice in the good rather than dwell on the bad…