Jhoom Barabar Jhoom

Loyalty has no bounds! Since my boss’s son worked on the film Jhoom Barabar Jhoom directed by Shaad Ali (who has made lovely films like Saathiya and Bunti Aur Bubli), I felt I had to see it!

So the other day we went to Satyam, a new multiplex in town. (It's a branch of the original Satyam which is in Patel Nagar) Although everybody said Jhoom Barabar Jhoom was a bad film, we still decided to invest two precious hours of our lives on it.

My two friends and I reached Satyam, a spanking new and shining Cinema hall, at Nehru Place, Asia's biggest software bazaar, around 6. The show was to start at 6:20 pm. Now when you drive up to the cinema hall cars are parked on both sides of the road with not an inch of parking space available. For any Delhite this is a common sight outside any cinema hall.

With all the confusion and mayhem around this congested part of the city random thoughts of fights with parking attendants, Delhi traffic police, car getting towed and Challans came to my mind.

Then I saw a sign saying 7 storeys parking available. A brilliant discovery! Right next to the cinema hall too! The parking plaza is of international standards, clean with lifts that play instrumental music, the flute. Of course, it all came for a price - Rs 20 for 2 hours, and a minute longer meant paying Rs 20 more.

We rushed to the theatre, 1 ticket – 175 bucks. What! In Mumbai it’s the norm but no where in Delhi. The best halls give a standard ticket for 150/- . Oh well.. It’s for a good cause! We owed it to the boss’s son to see the first film he had worked on.

We finally entered the glitzy complex. There was Pizza Hut and McDonalds on the ground floor while the upper floors, which housed the auditoriums, were stylishly designed and elegantly-lit.

We entered the hall, it was well laid out but here are the downsides:

1. The popcorn is horrible and costs too much – think Chanakya cinema popcorn which has this stale, kept for 2 hours taste to it!
   
2. The Pepsi is in an insanely huge glass – 1 litre no less
   
3. The combo -Popcorn & Pepsi- cost 150 I think (I don’t remember the exact figure as I was flabbergasted! It took all 3 of us to finish the glass.)
   
4. The seats did not recline. Yes, you could have pushed them back but if you were short in height like me your feet wouldn't have touched the ground!
   
5. I had goose bumps because I was sooo cold. Air conditioning was too Arctic but that could be because there were only ten people in the audience!
   
6. The scariest moment came when my pregnant friend went to the loo in the dark. The staircase was almost a straight wall (as against a soft hill incline) and we were seated at the top!
   
   In all, the new multiplex was not bad but why pay such an obscenely high price when you can enjoy films in better ones at cheaper rates?
   
   And yes, the film was quite unbearable except for the one song that is topping the charts – Jhoom Barabar Jhoom! However this song lasts over ½ an hour towards the end.
   
   Well I guess I should have been prepared that I would not like the film. Songs like Ticket to Hollywood and Kiss of Love are in this film (they have a good tempo but meaningless words and no relevance in the film), the plot was weak from what I had heard so what else did i expect!