Review: HELLO (2008)

Starring: Sharman Joshi, Sohail Khan, Gul Panag, Eesha Koppikar, Amrita Arora, Dalip Tahil and Sharat Saxena

Director: Atul Agnihotri

Rating: 2.5/5

The film is a tale within a tale wherein a beautiful stranger (Katrina Kaif) starts to narrate the story of six call centre employees to a waiting in the airport lounge rockstar (Salman Khan). Her tale is about Shyam who is losing his girl friend because his career is going nowhere as he trudges his way around in a call center. His girl friend, Priyanka is also an agent like him at the call center who is about to be snatched by an NRI techno geek. There is also the aspiring model, Esha, who is hoping for the break that seems to be always already eluding her and the man about town, Vroom, who is into well, things. The housewife, Radhika, who is constantly at the receiving end of her mother-in-law and a beleaguered grandfather, Military uncle, who has been barred from interacting with his grandchild make up the rest of the call agents who see their worlds crumbling around them as the decisions of right sizing are conveyed by Bakshi, the boss. It is a night when dreams will finally crumble. Or will it? For there is that call from God.

What makes HELLO fun is the screenplay and dialogues. They are extremely funny and engaging at places. Call Centre going crowd will definitely identify with their daily happenings shown authentically in the film. Though the pace slacks midway and we keep waiting for that phone call from GOD, the film never bores. The music however could have been better. There are just two songs that you can barely term okay – BANG BANG BANG (picturised on a bare chested Salman) and KARLE BABY DANCE WANCE. There is an extremely boring and unwanted song number in the second half which needs to be edited out immediately.

Both Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are barely there beyond 10 minutes screen time. So don’t venture in expecting to be a Salman-Katrina film. Sohail Khan is fun to watch and derives the maximum laughs. He is a great comic relief in the otherwise serious film. Gul Panag is just about okay while Eesha Koppikar has done a good job. Amrita Arora probably for the first time is likeable. She is fully dressed for a change and acts ably especially in the emotional scenes. The best amongst the lot however is Sharman Joshi. Its his best performance till date. Sharat Saxena, Bharati Achrekar and Dalip Tahil give able support.

Atul Agnihotri’s first film as a director, ‘Dil Ne Jise Apna Kaha’ was a flop but he redeems himself with HELLO. His handling of both comic and serious scenes deserve an applause. Chetan Bhagat the original author of the book, ‘One Night At The Call Centre’, also being the co-screenplay writer of the film along with Atul, has helped the film a lot.

All in all those who want to experience a ‘hatke’ film with some dose of entertaining masala would definitely won’t be dissappointed with HELLO. It is a timepass flick which may hit off well with the younger generation.

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