Guru - A few lessons yet to be learnt!

Guru
My personal rating: Low Blood Pressure (5/10)

The main problem with the movie is that while it does manage to grab your attention now and then, it is not able to hold it.
The movie oscillates between emotional drama and the business side of things. Whenever something interesting seems to be happening on the business side some emotional drama is injected. There is no continuity in the movie. In one scene things look absolutely bleak for the hero, in the other everyone is dancing with joy.
The timeline of the movie itself is not very continuous either and one is not able to understand the temporal gap between events. When you are trying to tell a story of events happening over a period of 30-35 years especially against a dynamic background (in this case Post-Independence India) one needs to be very careful in establishing a clear timeline.

All this inspite of lifting parts of the story straight out of the life of Dhirubhai Ambani.

The end of the movie is one big emotional stretch which hindi movies are so famous for.
It also leaves various loose ends such as:

1. What happens to the conflict between Mithun/Madhavan and Abhishek Bachhan?
2. How does Abhishek manage to recover his personal and business lives after the hearing?
3. What happens to his wife's brother?

It seems to me that the director wanted to make a movie which showed off all aspects of the struggle of Abhishek Bachhan both on a personal front and on the business front. What comes out is a horribly mixed up story where instead of having seamless integration of the two story lines there is a cut-paste feel to it. Its like watching a Powerpoint slide of a movie.

I think Aishwarya Rai should not have been picked as the heroin. They should have picked someone a bit low-key and made the emotional side of the story a background for the business side. I don't think high-profile actresses like Aishwarya can ever be expected to play background roles successfully. Vidya Balan had absolutely no role in the movie except to be the weeping point for both the parties.

It reminds me of the movie Kalyug (directed by Shyam Benegal) which manages to achieve what Guru tries to.

A few positives about the movie:

Mithun's acting. Simply amazing, shows that he still has it in him! But his whole effort is wasted because the story never gets continuous enough.

Madhavan's acting. Role perfectly suited to him.

The instrumental soundtrack is quite nice and the titles are very well designed (flipping pages).

Aishwarya Rai dances well especially in the song 'Barso re megha..' she seems to have a very flexible body.