Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Manoj Bajpayee, Prateik Babbar, Tanvi Azmi.

Star: 4/10

After Rajneeti,  and the trailers on screen I was expecting a lot from Aarakshan. Coming from Prakash Jha, it promised to deal with fiery political issues, the common men that Jha insists holds the power to change, the virtue of being a rebel and bringing out the darkness that Indian Politics is. Aarakshan was every bit what it promised to be, except enjoyable.

The film in the first half revolves around poor dalit Deepak Kumar (Saif Ali Khan) & rich Shuhant ( Pratiek Babbar) and their difference of opinion regarding the reservation policy in the education system. Both their stands are equally justified. It is their disagreements in between Prof Prabhakar Anand ( Amitabh Bachhan) and Poorvi ( Deepika Padukone) find themselves torn in. On the other hand are the rich ministers and greedy professors who slowly turn the Education system into a money churning machine. At this point the film though seems hurried, using fade-ins and cuts to show the spreading of the movement. It starts to build up, and then suddenly in-between it all, Saif Ali Khan who was yelling for the rights of the lower caste vanishes to USA for a PhD!!!

The second half suddenly puts the reservation issue somewhere in the background. To say that the film moved away from the plot will not be a mistake. The second half becomes the story of Amitabh Bachhan who tries to educate the poor, free of cost to prove he is a true teacher, above the narrowness of money and politics. Then it becomes the tale of high-priced tution classes against true education given to educate the poor. The tussle between money/politics ( presented excellently by Manoj Bajpai) and honest Education ( Bachhan) becomes more extened, and little meaningless with Bajpai plotting strange schemes against Prof Anand’s family.

Altogether it seemed that the film tried to deal with a vast topic which it could not control within the time span. The argument presented is justified, i.e to allow the education to be equally available to all at the primary and secondary level, so that at the level of higher education reservation may not be needed at all. This idea is appreciable. What is not, is the Rajneeti style of film-making. It has too many stars, and too few dialogues, extremely fast moving storyline and unfortunately lack of continuity between incidents. Everyone acted well, however, except of Amitabh Bachhan none had much to do. Saif Ali Khan had some good dialogues and scenes. Deepika Padukone, though did her job well, is making a habit to playing the role of the uninhibited girl, who asks her men out first. Pratiek Babbar neither looked nice, nor acted well. It was difficult to understand why was he there at all. He could have been used in much better roles. Same goes for Tanvi Azmi, as Deepika Padukone’s mother. She had just two lines, inspite of being such a veteran actor.

Rajneeti had a certain glamor quotient, which Aarakshan lacks. The songs are not good enough to note. Rajneeti worked because of the tensed, well-paced storyline and the apt & attractive cast. The storyline in Aarakshan had lot of potential, but Jha seemed to have tried tell two tales in one film, hence both remain half- spun. WE expect a lot from the multi National Award winning director. Watching this in a hall will be a waste unless you are a hell-bent fan. Get a dvd, hopefully not a pirated one