Soundtrack Hindi Movie
When you remake a film officially, you have so much to fall back on - a readymade story, the entire scenario, and the screenplay etc. In such cases, one expects a good watch by default. Though not a lot of people may know that the minimally publicised Rajeev Khandelwal starrer Soundtrack is an actual remake of Canadian film It's All Gone Pete Tong one does expect some strong storyline from the looks of the promo. Whether it lives up to the expectations or not remains to be seen.
Soundtrack is the story of a music composer cum singer cum DJ Raunak Kaul (Rajeev Khandelwal) who comes to Mumbai with dreams of making it big in Music industry. He starts out as a DJ and turns out to be huge star of a club Tango Charlie run by Charlie (Mohan Kapoor). While the chronic alcoholic takes to alcoholism, drugs and smoking in a big way, success keeps following the DJ until a cruel turn of events changes his life forever. Soundtrack traces the rise, fall and 're-rise' of a character who eats, sleeps and thrives on music.
There are some films that sound very interesting and thrilling on papers but the moment they translate on celluloid, their magic just fades away. The case with Soundtrack apparently seems the same. Think of that one event in your life that completely takes away all that you ever had or wanted. Scary isn't it? That's exactly something that the film tries projecting with the idea of a passionate and successful DJ suddenly turning deaf; his rise from the ashes giving way to one of the most inspirational stories.
However, nothing quite like that happens on screen. What you get in turn is pretentious plot, pretentious acting and pretentious execution. Raunak Kaul's rise and fall doesn't quite engage you enough to feel the high of getting wasted like a junkie the way he feels, to feel his plight when he goes numb on music or to feel his passion for music when he beats his shortcoming and rises back like a phoenix.
Moreover, there's an angle of Raunak's alter ego nagging him in the form of a clown that stays with him 24*7 never making him wonder or react to it strongly; a very amusing element poorly written.
The first half of the film hangs very loosely on threadbare execution with as many as 3 sequences that could well be interval points. The second half of the film does bring in the crux of the storyline making for an interesting watch. Filmmaker Neerav Ghosh's direction is extremely poor making his film look more like a tawdry piece of work so much so that there are errors that don't need an expert's eye. For example, a bad close-up of a heavily bearded Raunak where even the gum of his fake wig can be seen, or even a scene where Mrinalini Sharma removes her bikini on beach while her skin coloured inner can easily be seen; so much for skin show!
There are many club shots where the camerawork could be better to increase the impact of Raunak's trance mood. There definitely hasn't been any focus on authenticity too as you see Rajeev Khandelwal taking Soha Ali Khan on a date to a fancy restaurant where the two only order for double whiskey shots, don't eat anything and ask for the bill. Even at that the bill for three double whiskey shots comes up to only 530 Rupees, an unrealistic price in today's inflated time.
Rajeev Khandelwal is decent in parts but comes across as a misfit in this story in more cases than one. Even his dialogue delivery seems faulty. Soha Ali Khan is delightfully pleasing while Mohan Kapoor does a good job as Charlie.
Music by various artistes is very good with some of the remixes like Yeh Jeevan Hai, Ruk Jaana Nahi standing out. Editing of the film could've been better.
Over all, Soundtrack is decent in parts and could've made for a very upheaving watch had it been for better execution.
MOVIE REVIEWS