Love Stories

I'm gradually working my way through Aishwarya Rai's experience-based filmography and I'm seeing Amitabh quite often, Shah Rukh Khan less so. However, Love Storiessurprised me with its layering because filling 216 minutes with only two main storylines and one minor one is quite sparse. And if the whole corpus is connected by a single campus, there really is very little plot. Personally, I would be satisfied with just a straightforward repetition of the topic - "I will become your son-in-law because I fully deserve your daughter's love and at the same time I will prove to you that to meet progress does not offend the traditions you respect." This eventually led to a fully and satisfyingly played-out triangle of the charming, restrained, and romantic Aishwarya, the traditional stoic Bachchan senior, and the likable Shah Rukh Khan, who this time played a music teacher and added subtle frames to the image. What I would have entirely ignored is the illustrative and complementary plot of Shah Rukh Khan's students, whose love of music helps them make progress in their own love lives. Because I didn't count on it after Dhoom 2, I find that I'm allergic to Uday Chopra. So what is the resulting review for? Aishwarya kicked it up in a big way after the interval and it was hard to wait for her, but the music component was so ethereal and it appeased me in the end. (10/10/2010)