Spoilers herein.

Salaam-e-Ishq easily falls into ‘one of the most eagerly awaited films of the year’ category, and one can’t help but think that hype killed the effort. Not that the film is much to write home about, but the sheer load of negative reaction from all quarters: from my little sister to the 60 yr old neighbor, from my filmmaker friends to a radio jockey publicly broadcasting it as “the worst 4 hours of my life,” Salaam-e-Ishq is begging for sympathy for all that it did achieve: an ensemble cast that comes about in Bollywood perhaps once in a decade and is increasingly difficult to put together given stars’ temperaments these days; a clearly distinctive yet interwoven multi-plot – again a rarity in Hindi cinema, despite it’s popular rise in the west as a choice of screenplay structure; and the director managing to extract some pretty decent performances from average actors such as John Abraham and Akshaye Khanna.

The songs are alright too and don’t jar in placement as they did in, say, Guru. The title track is very catchy despite it’s typical lyrics and so is Tainu Leke; I suppose the Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy combo is turning out to produce the most consistent albums amongst the crop of regular composers. Choreography ranges from the average to slightly above average.

Performances, as mentioned earlier, are notable too. Govinda is surprisingly effective by turning down his non-acting histrionics a notch, Vidya Balan and Juhi Chawla are dependable as usual and Ayesha Takia (there is really something about her!) continues going from strength despite a characterless role. But clearly winning over is Akshaye Khanna with his tailor-made role where he has grasped that there is scope beyond imitating De Niro all the time as he does in most films. The surprise package, performance-wise, is John Abraham who seems to have come a long way from his woodenness of Dhoom and Taxi 9211. It could be the editing, but his tears always appeared at the right time and there was genuineness in his persona.

Art direction and camera were good because they weren’t in your face and generally subdued to the point of playing second fiddle to the performers but complementing them perfectly. It’s pointless to give any credit to the editor because she didn’t really do much considering the length of the film. In-film advertising remains hugely distracting.

Now, the disappointments. As usual, it’s the screenplay that is the film’s undoing. Since Advani openly attributes inspiration to Love Actually, he might as well have gone ahead and made the film closer to the original. After all, there is no justification for this film being nearly 4 hours long with 5 stories, when Love Actually wrapped up 9 stories (completely, thoroughly, and without any loopholes) in 2 hours. There are so many weaknesses and inconsistencies, that it’d make this review as long and boring as the movie itself if we had to list them all. Just take each story and separate it from the rest and put them together linearly in your head. It’s incredible how weak each of them is. Take the Abraham-Balan story for instance. It’s nothingness. And it’s we’ve-seen-it-all-before nothingness. When Akshaye Khanna slams into Balan, Adavni tries to be clever by not doing the obvious and pulling of a Rajnikant and tempting us to believe that this’ll get her memory back. What nonsense. It’s not clever. It’s a cover-up much like the flashbacks that form the bulk of the Abraham-Balan story. The point that they are Hindu and Muslim and happily married should not have taken more than one or two scenes at most. It’s the same thing with Anil Kapoor’s track. Character inconsistencies make the story unreal. Temptation is an everyday, everybody story. There should’ve been more sensitivity in the way the romance progressed. We’ve no clue why Anjali falls in love with someone who looks and behaves like a million other black suits or is she a man-eater? We never know. In fact, the only sensitivity is from Juhi Chawla whose reactions are most appropriately timed and delivered. Kapoor positively bumbles in comparison. And yet just when Advani is going the right route by getting Chawla to lambast Kapoor on the plane, she retracts and gives in. In most stories Advani simply seems scared to go run the last mile. You can’t make a point, only to apologize for it seconds later! Every story didn’t need a happy ending. In fact the only track that has a proper beginning, middle and end with sufficient drama and moments in between is the Khanna-Takia story that leaves no questions unanswered about the plot or the characterization, though isn’t it something we’ve seen before? This is in stark contrast with the Salman Khan-Priyanka Chopra romance. Here is a really smart, comparatively original concept treated with such ineptitude! How can there be no absolutely no background information about Khan’s character? And what was he doing at the shaadi in the climax? And WHY does Kamini have to make a choice between husband and career? How backward! Apparently Khan wasn’t happy about the mysteriousness of his character. It just makes you wonder when will actors insist on reading final scripts before signing films. As for the Sohail Khan-Isha Koppikar “story,” well am not even going to bring it up.

The end somewhat redeems itself with a play on clichés, which is admittedly, not the strongest way to resolve three and half hours of glycerine-induced drama but at least it was fresh despite ludicrously forced assembly of character appearances.

To be sure, the film does have some strong moments – like Akshaye’s imagination playing tricks on him and every time Govinda and Shannon Esra are lost in translation.

Most filmmakers struggle with length. Contrary to popular perception, it really is more difficult to hold an audience’s attention for anything over 2 hours on a single subject than it is to tell a story in under a minute as it is in the case of ads. It’s easy to edit. At the script as well as post level. There was absolutely no reason for a film that’s actually telling 6 simplistic stories to go anything beyond the two and half hour mark. Such films are patronizing their own audience. Smart scenes do the job with minimum dialogue and zero repetition. Unfortunately there was a lot of both in Salaam-e-Ishq. After Kal Ho Naa Ho, this film is an incredible let down. Is Advani going the Farhan Akhtar way where each subsequent film is worse than the last? The only thing that each of these directors betters with each film is style. And the day style starts dictating what good cinema is, I can assure you Upperstall will stop reviewing them.