Tera Jadoo Chal Gaya

I had a dream one night that one of my friends unexpectedly brought Abhishek Bachchan to a party at my house. Before I had time to register what was happening, Abhishek had dumped out several suitcases of dirty clothes on the living room floor and started doing his laundry in the washing machine in the hallway. I said, "Um, make yourself at home, I guess." Then I remembered that I'd left the library's copy of Tera Jadoo Chal Gaya out by the TV. I was worried that Abhishek would erroneously think I was a crazy fan-girl if he saw that I'd watched this film, but I told my friends that I was hiding the DVD because otherwise Abhishek might steal it and destroy it as part of his quest to get rid of all evidence of what a terrible actor he was at the beginning of his career. Everyone was like, "That does make sense. We'd better find a good hiding place." I'm not sure what this dream tells you about my subconscious, but it probably tells you all you need to know about this film.

The plot, which was apparently taken from a Jennifer Aniston movie called Picture Perfect, is pretty standard romantic-comedy fare. Pooja (Kirti Reddy), an employee at a Bombay advertising agency, meets Kabir (Abhishek Bachchan) at her friend's wedding in Agra. Kabir is smitten, and Pooja is oblivious. For some unknown reason, Pooja takes more time off work than her boss allowed, so the boss decides to fire her when she returns. Her assistant (Johny Lever) saves her job by showing the boss a picture of Pooja and Kabir and telling him that Pooja was held up because she got engaged. This causes some complications when Kabir arrives in Bombay and makes a good impression on the boss. Further complications ensue when Pooja falls for the boss's son (Sanjay Suri), who satisfies all of her requirements for a man because he drives a Mercedes, wears an Armani suit, and has nice shoes.


While good scripting and acting could have made quite a decent film out of this premise, the execution leaves something to be desired. None of the characters are all that sympathetic -- Pooja is shallow and vapid, Kabir is a bit of a simpleton (and stalker), and the boss's son can't seem to muster up the energy to care about anything one way or the other. (When Kabir and Pooja tell him that Pooja is madly in love with him, he thinks for a minute, then calmly says, "That's interesting. I like it.") And the less said about the acting, the better. On the plus side, however, this film is a treasure-trove of fugly clothing.









Maybe the filmmakers were trying to distract the viewers' attention away from the main actors' less-than-stellar dancing with the bizarre costumes in the background. If so, it worked.


Overall, I'd say my opinion of this film mirrors the boss's son's opinion of Pooja: I wouldn't mind having it around if I didn't have any better options, but I also wouldn't particularly care if Abhishek did decide to steal it away.