Marigold Movie Review: A Lesson in Futility

Salman Khan's much awaited foray into Hollywood in Willard Carroll's Marigold doesn't quite turn out the way one expected. It fails to live up to any kind of expectations. In fact, barring the presence of Salman Khan, the film has little else to offer. It's quite a poor attempt at bringing the two - Hollywood & Bollywood?together. The film's story revolves around Marigold (Ali Larter), who is 'like the flower,' we are reminded about half a dozen times in the film. Marigold is spoilt, American starlet, who finds herself stranded in Goa, ostensibly to shoot for a movie which has been shelved. She meets Prem (Salman Khan), the choreographer of a Hindi film, who is actually a Prince, slumming it out on the sets of a Hindi film. Marigold lands the part of the vamp in the movie. Prem takes her under his wing, protects her and teaches her how to dance Hindi film style. Inevitably, the two of them fall in love. Bit there is a hitch: Marigold has a fianc?e back home called Barry while Prem is engaged to Nandana Sen, his childhood friend. Prem takes Marigold home to his family but is forced kowtow to his parents' wish and marry Nandana. The path of true love never did run smooth. So there is a minor conflict of sorts created by the director of true love versus tradition, but it lacks bite. It all gets resolved all too quickly when Marigold's fianc?e lands up as well at the palace. With a little help from the ditched lovers, Nandana Sen and Barry, Marigiold and Prem are united in wedlock. So much for the story. There is obviously no novelty in the story, which is not really the problem. The problem is that the director makes no attempt to create a plot which could be remotely interesting. The film plods towards the end, which is a forgone conclusion anyway. The conflict never really appears as a proper conflict. The love story fails to move. There is an obvious emotional disconnect somewhere. Merely throwing in props and costumes does not a film make. It's sad to have to say it, but Willard Carroll's efforts are quite amateurish. The only emotion that the film elicits is one of sympathy for Salman Khan. The dialogues in English are so stilted that it is hard to believe that this is a film being made in 2007. It specially becomes obvious in the scenes between Salman and his 'royal' parents (played by Kiran Juneja and Vijayendra Ghatge). And then there is Gulshan Grover, who plays one of the royal guards. He never speaks and is present as a prop in most of the scenes. The only word that he utters throughout the film is a stern "no." Marigold's heroine Ali Larter breezes through her role with confidence. She may not be much of an actor, but she has an endearing kind of confidence. Nandana Sen has scope to act but ends up acting coy and petulant. In fact, Suchitra Pillai and Rakesh Bedi are more watchable. Despite their teeny-weeny parts, the two of them put in a good show. Our hero Salman Khan looks great, dances a bit, looks suitably in love, in short does all that is expected of him, but never really seems at ease. That is another drawback for any Salman fan. He is not the Salman that we are used to seeing. What we see on screen is a very watered down, mute Sallubhai. Marigold has little to engross the audience. Objectively speaking, it has all the expected elements but somehow the film as a whole fails to strike a chord with its viewers.