Mangal gets Bungled

OK, so I'm not a professional film critic, but hey I paid good money to go see a film so I think I should get to comment on it. Note: In my review no fancy words will be used, I will not name drop big names like Udayakumar and Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao or even what's his name... oh yeah, Spielberg. It will also be a short review.

First of all, I felt let down by Aamir Khan. After waiting four years for one of his films I can't help but think - this is it? This is what he's been doing? He grew that moustache and horrible mullet for this?

I can only blame the director. The pace of the film was often disrupted with songs that had no business being there (Rahman disappoints - Mangala was lovely but the others failed to impress). It was as though every time he wasn't sure what to do next he put in a song to give him sone time to figure things out.

The dialogues were average. Strange as it was to see Aamir sprout dialogues in English, his Hindi lines were even less effective. When he's firing up his comrades to fight the Brits it left me cold. I couldn't help but think of movies like Bravheart and the Patriot. Those pre-battle speeches made me want to go and fight with them. Aamir seemed so trite. Wide glaring eyes don't make up for bad dialogue.

The women in the film were superflous. Rani was alright and Amisha was screechy whenever she came on screen (which wasn't alot - honey, why were you making so much noise about this role? The sweeper in the film had more dialogues than you did)

The gora who played Captain Gordon was good, and some of the scenes between him and Aamir were lovely to watch.

On the whole not great not bad. WHich is terrible I think. A film should touch you in some way. Even if you really hate a movie at least it incites some kind of reaction in you. Mangal Pandey left me exactly as it had found me. Hungry.