Starring: Vivek Oberoi, Rani Mukerjee
Special Appearances By: Shahrukh Khan and Tabu
Director: Shaad Ali
Music: A.R. Rahman
Lyrics: Gulzar
Screenplay: Mani Ratnam
Produced By: Kaleidoscope Entertainment
Released By: Yash Raj Films
Saathiya is a very light romantic drama, an old-fashioned story from the era of 70s & 80s where parents and social status used to come as an inseparable wall and the lovers usually have to run away from their homes and do secret marriages. The only so-called new or better thing shown is the real life drama which happens after the marriage. The ups and downs faced by the couple, is the interesting part of the movie which is the real essence of the whole story.
Aditya (Vivek Oberoi) is a rich spoiled lad who falls in love with Suhani (Rani Mukerjee) a middle class ambitious medical student intended to become a Doctor so her parents can feel proud on her. But Aditya comes into her way by falling in love with her at a wedding. He then follows her madly along with his group of friends to convince her to love him as well. But Suhani didn’t come into his charm very easily and eventually he sends his parents to Suhani’s house to ask her hand from her parents. But this whole plan didn’t work out as expected and the couple decided to break up and Suhani leaves for some other place for medical practice while Aditya couldn’t forget her and chased her till there. In the meantime, Suhani also realizes that she cannot live without him as well. Finally both of them get secretly married and their secret gets blew in front of their parents and both of them had to leave their homes.
The real story starts here when the love between the two didn’t turn out as expected. Suhani being a wife still acts as an immature teenager and expects the same passionate love from Aditya whereas he gets busy in his own business setup and becomes too mature by not showing the same affection and love like he used to do before getting married. The differences started to occur from there and both of them had a cold war. Finally Suhani faces a very terrible accident done by Tabu’s car and gets unconscious. Shahrukh gives his appearance as Tabu’s husband at the end of the movie almost!
On the other hand Aditya waits all day long for her and eventually starts searching for her and finally finds her at the hospital in an unconscious form. It was then he realizes that how much he loves her still and how did he ignored and hurt her emotional needs and feelings. Finally Suhani returns to consciousness and both of them forget and forgive every bad thing which happened between them.
Overall it was a light romantic real life drama movie with good and impressing dialogues having a lighter comedy touch at some places and because of very melodious songs, quality picturization and direction there was no need to cast these two super stars Tabu and Shahrukh for such a short and insignificant role. Of course the main reason would be to sell the movie so Shahrukh and Tabu lovers would love to watch that movie too.
This movie touches the sensitive topic of human emotions and the changes to which one usually undergoes during his/her life very successfully. It portrayed a passionate romance which is almost very real to life! This movie is basically for teenagers and youngsters especially for the couples newly or old wedded couples. It gives a lesson to them that lovers should not change their internal love chemistry after getting married & should understand each others problems, emotional needs and feelings because the life is too short to spend it in quarrels and cold wars.
The major or dumb flaw in the movie was to show Suhani (Rani Mukerjee) having such a bad accident just like the one showed with Brad Pitt in the movie “Meet Joe Black” and miraculously (which always do happen in Indian movies) she woke up on the same night safe and sound. This is difficult to digest that a person having such a bad accident in the day just wakes up and gets conscious in the same night perfectly? The way accident was shown using a dummy did not match with the theme of story and she should have been dead or if she comes back to life then it should have happened after a week or so.
But even after these little mistakes, the movie was overall a hit and scored 6 Film Fare awards. The songs composed by A.R. Rahman were superb including the lyrics by Gulzar especially the title sound track “Saathiya”.
