It’s the chemistry, not the history, stupid! Jodhaa Akbar is not a historical film, it’s a romantic period film, making the valuable point that often people from different backgrounds and cultures do fall in love. Yet, for a Rs 40 crore film, it is poorly shot and executed (to have wipes between scenes is an incredibly lazy transition device), Aishwarya’s costumes abound in badly cut brassieres, some of the forts look like they are (and probably were) made of cardboard, the music is eminently forgettable, of which the most pathetic sequence is the Republic Day parade-type of song, in which only the tanks and the overhead fly-past are missing.

Yet the film works only because of Hrithik and the sheer passion he manages to ignite on the screen. What is it that makes him so different? After all, he is mostly playing Rambo-Akbar, and there is an ample display of his rippling muscles as he strips his shirt (eat your heart out Shah Rukh, this is the real six abs version) and is effortless in his sword play. He has been hampered by a melodramatic script (very Mughal-e-Aazam with Prithvi Raj Kapoor-style declamation) and various anglicised versions of Urdu spoken by those around him. He has the impossible task of acting opposite Aishwarya Rai, whom no one could ever accuse of acting — and yet the man manages to transcend every problem.

The film should have been called Akbar’s Jodhaa. (Funnily enough, Salman Rushdie has apparently written about how Akbar invented this gorgeous impossible ideal woman called Jodhaa, and the same thought crossed my mind while watching the film). Despite all ham-handed attempts by Gowariker, Hrithik as Akbar creates this Jodhaa in front of our eyes. We love her, bra and all, because he loves her. Like her, we try to resist him initially only because this is a wonderful metrosexual, renaissance man, and his very touch could make us swoon and forget reality.

... contd.