Dangerous Ishhq is a reminder of an era in Bollywood when filmmakers could grossly underestimate their audiences' thinking capacity and get away with it, writes Puja Banta.Before the release of
Dangerous Ishhq, I had heard that the film is about past life regression. After having watched the film I can confirm that it is indeed about past life regression. I can also confirm that the regression here is not confined to past life. It is also a regression into an era when Bollywood filmmakers could grossly underestimate their audiences' thinking capacity and get away with it.
The film brings Karisma Kapoor back on the big screen after a six-year hiatus. In the interviews that Karisma gave as a run up to the film, she described her role in
Dangerous Ishhq as the most challenging role of her career. She essays four different characters across four time periods in the film.
Starting with a supermodel Sanjana whose fiancé Rohan ( Rajneesh Duggal) is kidnapped under mysterious circumstances, Karisma goes on to play Geeta, Salma and Paro across five centuries. All this made possible by her doctor who makes Sanjana delve into her past lives in order to identify Rohan's kidnappers. The doctor casually throws in references to famous psychiatrist Dr Brian Weiss and his past-life therapy in support of her treatment of Sanjana. And from here on things get increasingly bizarre.
Despite her claims of having worked very hard for the film, none of Karisma's four characters leave any impact on the audience. A ridiculous and faulty plot, superficial dialogue delivery and weak direction leaves the audience completely untouched and mighty annoyed at being taken for such a dumb ride.
However, a couple of impressive dialogue deliveries by Karisma's period characters do assure us that her acting prowess has not dwindled over the years. Given an opportunity, she can still pull off a
Zubeidaa with the same panache and possibly
more depth and maturity.