Mujhse Shaadi Karogi: A nice watch

The first time I saw this movie, it was a few months after it had appeared. When it released, I was dismissive, thought that it would be a normal movie, what with Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan, and Priyanka Chopra; a normal movie with both of them fighting with each other for her, and so and so forth, you know the standard type. But then I watched it on TV, and it was a totally different experience.



First of all, I found the movie overall to be a great comedy. It's a light movie that moves along at a fair clip, with very few scenes that could be seen to be dragging. Secondly, the character fitting seemed to be fine, with Akshay playing a dashing semi-playboy all about to wreck the romance of Salman and Priyanka, Salman playing a normal guy who is caring about his family and yet had a temper problem, and Priyanka playing her usual beautiful self.
The movie is primarily about these 3 people, with excellent support from Amrish Puri (in probably one of his last movies), Rajpal Yadav, Kadar Khan and Satish Shah. Salman plays Sameer, a hot tempered but otherwise a very good natured guy who has moved to Goa to be the manager of the lifeguards section, in order to get away from the shock when his girlfriend (Amrita Arora) married somebody else. She was shocked when he used a lot of force and anger, ironically when he was saving her. In Goa, his neighbour is the retired Colonel (Amrish Puri) who lives with his wife (Supriya Karnik) and daughter Rani (Priyanka). Priyanka is a budding designer, waiting for her big break. They meet, and Salman falls head over heels for her, but over a series of circumstances Salman keeps on hitting or otherwise injuring the Colonel, ending up in Rani's bad books. He apologizes multiple times, but keeps on doing something or the other.
At this time, Akshay enters and charms his way into the Colonel's house by some smooth talk and repairing the Colonel's injured neck, and moves closer to Rani. A series of incidents, very humorous where he keeps on upstaging Salman, allthough in a very humorous way. Examples are mixing vodka in the orange juice that Rani gets for Salman, setting things in a way that Rani sees a beautiful girl in Salman's bed, gets an impression that hot posters of beautiful girls are Salman's and so on. In the meantime, Satish Shah, who works for Salman bears the brunt of his frustration and has to work night shifts, till it is revealed that he is Rani's uncle, and suddenly he is the favorite of Salman Khan. Rajpal Yadav plays the role of an astrologer who is advising Salman, mostly wrongly. In a double role, he also plays the role of a gang leader who gets beaten up by Salman (when Salman in a haze believes that he is beating up Akshay). There is another incident when Salman anonymously pays for Priyanka's entry into a contest which she wins, and then Akshay takes credit.
There is one slightly strange incident in the latter half of the movie, when a magician brings Salman and Priyanka together, after Priyanka was vehemently against him. Seemed very contrived. The ending is in a cricket match opening where Kapil Dev, Harbhajan Singh and Navjot Sidhu are there, where Salman publicly confesses that he loves Priyanka and Akshay confesses that he is Salman's longtime friend, helping him in trying to control his anger. Overall a good movie.
Some nice songs from the movie: Rab Kare Tujh Ko Bhi Pyar Ho Jaaye, Lal Dupatta, Mujhse Shaadi Karogi