The Film: Dil Hai Tumhara
Starring: Preity Zinta, Rekha, Mahima & Arjun Rampal
Producer: Kumar S. Taurani, Ramesh S. Taurani
Director: Kundan Shah
Music: Nadeem Shravan
Lyrics: Sameer
Score: * * ½

The problem with Bollywood is that dares not to change. Why stick to the same format of 3 hours and 6 songs? Make a good movie but don’t count the time on your fingers and just add masala to fill the extra space. This is a nice entertaining movie which ideally should have ended when the interval comes but the director tried to drag the story just to add those extra hours and that is the biggest mistake he makes.

The first half looks good with a good balance of humour and emotions. But the second half is a waste and makes the movie a boring affair.

Can you believe this - but Raj Kumar Santoshi long back had planned this movie and cast actors like Salman and Meenakshi Seshadri in the lead with Sunny and Dimple as special appearance!

That never happened and here is the version created by director Kundan Shah who earlier had made a sensitive film called Kya Kehna.

Shekhar (Sachin Khedekar) and his wife Sarita (Rekha) have a daughter Nimmi. When Sarita realises that Shekhar has another wife and daughter, he dies leaving behind the second daughter in Sarita’s care.

Nimmi and Shalu grow up to be Mahima Chaudhary and Preity Zinta. Sarita becomes the mayor of a town in Himachal Pradesh called Palampur. Even as her rival Mittal (Govind Namdeo) tries to usurp her chair for losses suffered by apple farmers in the town, Shalu disarms Dev (Arjun Rampal) the son of the owner of a huge apple factory Khanna (Alok Nath) and convinces them to help the farmers.

Thus she manages to help her mother keep her chair and Dev launch an apple juice product.

Meanwhile even as Shalu and Apple Dev are in love, Nimmi falls for Dev, and Shalu decides to sacrifice her love. Adding a couple of voices to the triangle is Sameer (Jimmy Shergill), a ventriloquist who is in love with Shalu.

Preity is the best in this movie - the entire movie belongs to her while Rekha has some negative shades to her character who I just about OK. Mahima looks old perhaps Rani would have been a better choice. Arjun is lot of fun her, he is natural and one character to look forward to. Jimmy looks pathetic and anyway he has very little to do in this film.

Nadeem-Shravan’s music along with good choreography is the positive aspect of this film. The music directors have shamelessly lifted Pakistani singer Hadiqa’s track for the puppet song here "Dil Laga Liya."

Overall a decent film with a bad script and equally bad dialogues.