OSO vs Saawariya

Saawariya
Saawariya is two hours 11 minutes of wide screen close-ups, fanciful sets, colourful costumes, belly buttons, almost-kisses and 10 pumped-up achingly sweet songs.
AO Scott, New York Times
How can it be that a movie as beautiful to look at as Saawariya is so . . . boring?
VA Musetto, NY Post

This hot-house hallucination by director Sanjay Leela Bhansali suggests a subcontinental American in Paris, except there are no Americans and the Paris in question is a Las Vegas hotel. For all the elaborate construction and energy, Saawariya is basically inert — the leading lady is unspeakably beautiful, but the leading man is as annoying, and when the most intriguing thing about a film is the production design, you know you’re in trouble.
John Anderson, Newsday

A really small movie done up in a big, moody package, Saawariya entices, fitfully springs to life but finally outstays its welcome by a good half-hour.
Derek Elley, Variety

Saawariya doesn’t collapse but does wobble for much of its nearly 150-minute running time, which is about 20 minutes shorter than the usual major Indian fare. Ranbir Kapoor, a scion of Bollywood royalty making his film debut, is a problematic leading man. In his initial song-and-dance number, he’s a cross between Bob Dylan and Jerry Lewis, and devolves from there, particularly in unflattering close-ups, into a wide-eyed naof.
Frank Lovace, Film Journal International

See Saawariya if you need to get some thinking done. Not that Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bollywood flick provokes thought — much to the contrary. During its 142 minutes of saree-swirling and hip-twitching, so little happens that you could tune out for an hour only to rediscover the same strapping fellow pursuing the same fickle damsel.... Alternatively, see this movie if you need to get some sleep.
Abigail Deutsch, The Village Voice

Om Shanti Om
Director Farah Khan’s penchant for old-school Bollywood is particularly palpable in her latest self-indulgent offering, Om Shanti Om. It stars her best pal and reigning king of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, playing a background artiste working in multicoloured 70s Bollywood.
Tajpal Rathore, BBC

We have a tradition of movies like this in the US overkill comedies, from 1941 to Evan Almighty, that smother every gag by staging them on a gargantuan scale. In Om Shanti Om, the team of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and A-list choreographer-turned-director Farah Khan whose first collaboration, Main Hoon Na, was the biggest Hindi hit of 2004, have pushed the earlier film’s gentle masala movie parody to repetitive extremes. Ironically, this old-school Bollywood hokum still has a lot of power when it’s executed with even a hint of conviction.
David Chute, LA Weekly
Om Shanti Om defines itself as a sloppy wet kiss to Bollywood-with-a-capital-B. Even the buzzed-about debut of star Shah Rukh Khan’s shirtless abs is done in an ironic way: an ego-driven song about the pain of disco. After all, it wouldn’t be Bollywood if it weren’t maxed-out, now would it?
Jason Ferguson, Orlando Weekly
Compiled by Ruma Singh

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com