Guru: the review

Guru is the character essay of Gurukant Desai, a villager who dreams big and is shrewd enough to make it come true. Like the fate of Gurukant Desai, the movie keeps meandering between the good and the bad.

Seemingly inspired by the life of Dhirubhai Ambani, Guru tells the story of a villager who always has grand plans for life. He is shown to be a go-getter, someone whose confidence and swagger never reduces in the toughest of situations. He is quick to learn the ways of the world and then change them to suit his own ambitions. His business-like approach to life often takes toll on his personal life, but he has his relationships to keep the human alive inside him. And so goes the story of Guru, from rags to insane riches, from fame to infamy.
The story is so dominated by this one character, that most other characters either seem unnecessary or downright distracting. Aishwarya doesn't get to actually act till maybe the last 30 minutes of the movie. Vidya Balan exists only to show Guru's human side. Madhavan is wasted in a role that could've been done by anyone who looks 25 and has a sparkle in his eyes. The only exception is the character of Mithun Chakraborty, who is Guru's mentor and later, bitter opponent.
Abhishek Bachchan as Guru is a good choice, neither the best nor the worst. He pulls off the role with sincerity. Although his acting cannot be classified as spectacular, he does justice to the role most of the time. Most noteworthy are his get-up and his body language, more than his histrionics. He conveys Guru's arrogance, swagger and disdain nicely, but looks awkward in Guru's more philanthropic moments. He does have quite a few scenes in the movie where he has to pull off an Amitabh and comes off looking truly junior to the senior Bachchan. Aishwarya has nothing to do in the movie till the last 30 minutes, when she has to emote a bit and look stressed out. Mithun Chakraborty performs well and to his true calibre. Others are not mentionable because they're either too vague or too unnecessary.

Mani Ratnam has stuck to his penchant for looking as authentic as possible, whether it being recreating India of the yesteryears or coming up with a mostly believable and thorough script. However he has some things against him in this movie that are normally his strong points. For one, the music is pathetic. Each song more ridiculous than the previous one, and made even more ridiculous by thrusting it in inopportune moments in the movie. The first 30 minutes test your patience with 2 non-descript songs, especially the rain song by Aishwarya where she ends up looking more mentally deranged than bubbly, thanks to the insane choreography. The background score is also quite pathetic, considering the magical background scores that Mani Ratnam has enjoyed with A R Rahman in the past. It was quite obvious that he struggled with writing the end of this movie, as the end was a bit of a mismatch to the whole story and the true character of Guru. Bringing country and patriotism into a story that is full of sheer opportunism sounded a bit strange.

Overall, watch it if you are Mani Ratnam loyalist, or wish to see Abhishek Bachchan take up a role of Amitabh proportions.