The Rainmaker

Movie: Wake Up Sid
Language: Hindi
Date: 07-Oct-2009

Review
During an actor’s life span some times he/she may come across roles which really do not require much imagination in terms of acting skills. These roles would require them to behave or react as what they are, both in terms of their real personality and physique. Ayan Mukerji’s directorial debut ‘Wake Up Sid’ sees B-Town’s newest star prodigee Ranbir Kapoor in one such role as the lazy kid-man ‘Siddharth’ aka Sid.

2 actors who live their roles
One of the wholesome positives of ‘Wake Up Sid’ is that its 2 lead actors suit their roles to the T, so much so that they seem like living it and not really acting.
Ranbir Kapoor is so much at élan and natural as the rich, careless, aimless, ambitionless youth, who feels it as a natural thing to say that what he wants to do in future, is to keep spending his father’s wealth.3 films old Ranbir, delivers his best performance to date in the movie. Ranbir as ‘Sid’ is young, charming and has wonderful screen presence. Ranbir doesn’t have to put much imagination in to the acting, which is evident from the last scene where he is sitting at the window and it starts raining. For the first time in the movie, he falters to bring in the right emotions when some imagination is called for. It almost shows that he was living through the rest of the entire movie.

Konkana as ‘Ayisha’, the ambitious yet cautious, uncompromising ‘new girl in the city’ of Mumbai, seems like a perfect cast. She is the mature calming presence who loves freedom and independence. Its through her eyes that Sid tries to at least get the first glimpse of what independence means and how it needs to be valued. Konkana may not have the spunk which other B-Town leading ladies have, but she delivers a fairly strong performance. On the flip side, ‘Wake Up Sid’ comes soon after ‘Luck By Chance’.The roles and the ambience are pretty similar which may be a spoiler for the fortunate few who have seen previous performance.

Music that Wakes You Up
Shanker-Ehsan and Loy have delivered at least 3 good tracks in this movie. The cool and soothing ‘IkTara’, the full of life ‘Life is Crazy’ and the title track ‘Wake Up Sid’. The music lifts the movie at some parts for sure.

Negatives
‘Wake Up Sid’ is slow by any standards. Its 2 hours and 15 minutes in length but feels like a full 3 hour movie. Ayan spends a lot of time building moments and the twists in the story fail to create impact, as the whole narration is in a breezy manner. This could easily have been a 1 hour 30 minutes movie.
And then, the script is weak. There are some sparkling moments thrown here and there but surely the script needs more mettle to hold viewer interest.
Director is so much involved with the breezy pace of the movie that viewers would soon loose interest. The only thing that would keep you hooked are Ranbir and Konkana as Sid and ‘Ayisha’.

Unlike as ‘Geet’ and ‘Aditya’ who traveled across the terrific landscape of the script of ‘Jab We Met’ and hence created a movie that was a treat to watch, ‘Sid’ and ‘Ayisha’ remain good performances alone, because the script that tells their story is not rich enough and the pace is slackening.

In short, ‘Wake Up Sid’ is a harmless one time watch for a little patient ones.

Verdict – 2.75 /5 as a Rating
Just Above Average as an Opinion

‘Sid just about manages to Wake Up’ – Thanks to Ranbir!