The Film: Rishtey
Producer: Indra Kumar
Director: Indra Kumar, Ashok Thakeria
Music: Sanjeev-Darshan
Lyrics: Abbas Katka
Starring: Anil Kapoor, Karisma Kaporr & Shilpa Shetty
RATING: 2/10

Maruti International's Rishtey (UA) is a film about marital discord born out of misunderstandings. A rich girl (Karisma Kapoor) falls in love with a poor boy (Anil Kapoor) but when her father (Amrish Puri) opposes their alliance, she elopes with the boy and gets married to him. Unhappy, the father succeeds in separating the two by creating a terrible misunderstanding between the couple. By then, the wife is pregnant and once she delivers her child (a baby boy), her father plots the new-born's elimination. The child's father learns of his father-in-law's evil intentions and runs away with his child from the hospital. He brings him up single-handedly.

After seven years, the estranged wife, unable to forget her child, drags her husband to court for child custody and succeeds by lying to the court. However, the case is reopened and the judgement this time goes in favour of the husband. Before any further misunderstandings can take place, it is time for reconciliation. A pretty fisherwoman (Shilpa Shetty), who loves the child and her father, clears a lot of things and gets the couple together again.

The story (Rajiv Kaul and Praful Parekh) has been stuffed with too many incidents (screenplay: Rajiv Kaul and Praful Parekh) and the aim seems to be singular - to make the audience cry. With such a concerted and obvious effort to draw tears, the impact of the emotional scenes is lost to a great extent. For, the drama looks like an assemblage of emotional scenes rather than a free-flowing sequence of events and incidents.

What's worse is that there's no novelty in thought or presentation so that the entire film looks like a khichdi of sequences from films such as Raja Hindustani, Kunwara Baap, Boxer and the director's own earlier hits, Dil, Raja and Beta. Although some dialogues (Tanveer Khan) are good, the overall job of the dialogue-writer remains average.

Yet another drawback is that while the main characters have all the important scenes, the other characters don't have any worthwhile scene and look like meaningless props. Even among the main characters, the wife has a relatively short role although it is played by a top actress like Karisma Kapoor. The other female lead's (Shilpa Shetty's) character develops well upto a certain point after which it is relegated to the sideline. All this happens because the effort seems to have been directed towards making a sob story rather than a sensible story!

The absence of the wife in the scene in which the husband storms into her house to meet his son after losing the court battle, jars because it is a supremely important scene and a turning point in the drama. The wife's prodding her husband to win his last fight in the boxing ring in the climax, when she should've actually asked him to come out of the ring (as the reason for his staking his life is no longer there, the wife having realised her folly), looks contrived. It also shifts the focus - his aim was to win Rs. 15 lakh (which could be achieved by defeating the opponent) and not merely to defeat the opponent.

Now on to the plus points in the film. Some comedy punches in the first half are fairly enjoyable. A couple of emotional scenes post-interval are quite touching. In particular, the scene in which the hero is humiliated by his father-in-law and he bears all the humiliation only so that he can meet his little son, and the last scene in which the kid asks his repentant grandfather to embrace him stand out for their sentimental value.

Anil Kapoor gets into the skin of the character and essays the role of the separated husband and doting father with admirable ease. But showing him as one who makes a living out of boxing does not convince the viewer as it goes against his image. Karisma Kapoor has a role that doesn't do justice to her standing as a top actress. Nevertheless, she is sincere in her performance. Shilpa Shetty scores in the mass-appealing role and entertains in the light scenes.

Amrish Puri does well. Master Jibraan Khan is cute and acts ably. Deepshikha leaves a mark. Sadashiv Amarapurkar, Sharat Saxena and Vishwajeet Pradhan lend fair support. Alok Nath is natural to the core. Achyut Potdar, Adi Irani, Renuka Israni, Jagdeep, Arjun, Anjan Srivastava and the rest fill the bill.

Indra Kumar's direction relies too heavily on clichéd situations to drive home points. Although his attempt is sincere, his style of narration appears dated for today's audience and suited for the more orthodox ladies audience only. Sanjeev Darshan's music is average. 'Rishta tera', 'Deewana deewana' and 'Apun ko' are fairly good numbers but the absence of hit songs is sorely felt. Song picturisations are ordinary.

Baba Azmi's camerawork is excellent as usual. Action scenes (Allan Amin) are well-composed. Bijon Dasgupta's sets are very natural. Production values are fair. Other technical aspects are of standard.