I may have attended not so many classes of marketing, but I understand the basics. Good advertising and marketing can only take you far, if you have a good product / service to begin with. Kites failed to understand that. The basic error that they made was, they thought the uncommon language barrier was worth the story whereas it was only the fringe benefit of the story, not the salary itself!
The story revolves around the life of Jay (Hrithik Roshan), who does odd jobs to earn his living and if they're not enough, he 'marries' women who want to get a green card for money on a regular basis. His counterpart is Linda, (Barbara Mori) who's come from a poor background herself to make money for her family back home. Coincidentally, he pretends to be in love with Kangana Ranaut, who's Kabir Bedi's daughter. Kabir Bedi by the way is this huge tycoon in Las Vegas and practically controls most of the casinos and the jazz there. Obviously, Linda pretends to be in love with Kangana's brother for the same reasons. Jay and Linda bump into each other at the latter's engagement, when they remember that some months back, they had 'married' each other for securing a green card for Linda. After that, sparks begin to fly, romance blossoms, understanding deepens and eventually just before her wedding to that non-descript brother, passions gain prominence and they realise that they're crazy about each other. Not surprisingly they're caught by the brother, and that begins their chase across cities, towns even countries...
They blow up cars, houses, run in deserts and do all sorts of things which seem unnecessary, pointless and without any backbone. It's almost like the director (not naming Basu, because this doesn't look like his work!) had a checklist of stunts, and activities he needed to insert in the movie! The movie ends like a modern day Romeo and Juliet and you're left wondering, what was the hype about?? Eventually there are very few moments which you take away from the movie, and that too because they were shot beautifully...
The screenplay and script is okay, nothing worth writing home about. In fact, I'm surprised that they call it a Hindi movie, considering it's 90% in either English / Spanish! The cinematography's quite nice though. Hrithik is stunning, he steals the show, and looks beautiful, graceful, sexy and amazing! Barbara is really not worth all the hype, in fact I liked her only in one scene, when she just comes out from a bath... she looked most fresh at that time. In most of the other scenes, she comes across as old, with cakey skin, and very basic acting abilities. I never thought I'll say this, but Aishwarya Rai is much better looking than her, and I say this because Aishwarya and Hrithik have the best on-screen chemistry I've seen in Hindi movies... I'm surprised they took such a sidey guy to be Kangana's brother, almost like they dreamed of his role at the last minute. With Kabir Bedi as the father, and Kangana Ranaut (who by the way does this amazing dance performance with Hrithik, her only moment to shine in the film) as the daughter, that forgettable guy irks you with his non-presence! Kunal Kapoor would've been the ideal choice for that role, but I guess they ran out of money in the end...
All in all, had they worked more on building a stronger story, writing a better script, and been more demanding in the acting from the actors, the movie would've been worth its salt.
Well... It's a huge blow to the Roshan family who were riding high on the success bandwagon for all these years, but I guess a reality check was needed. I just feel sad, because Hrithik's actually a good judge of movies these days! :( So my readers (wherever you are) please avoid watching this movie, unless you want to do it because you like criticising about it! :P
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