Anupama Chopra's review: Dangerous Ishhq
It's easy to understand why Karisma Kapoor chose Dangerous Ishhq as her comeback film after a hiatus of six years and two children. She's the hero. She sets the plot in motion. Anupama Chopra writes.
Dangerous Ishhq
Direction: Vikram Bhatt
Actors: Karisma Kapoor, Rajneesh Duggal, Jimmy Shergill
Rating: *1/2
It's easy to understand why Karisma Kapoor chose Dangerous Ishhq as her comeback film after a hiatus of six years and two children. She's the hero. She sets the plot in motion. She unravels the mystery. Eventually, she takes on the villain. She does this while wearing pink lipstick, gravity-defying high heels, gorgeous Manish Malhotra-designed Mughal-era Anarkali kurtas and Rajasthani ghagras, depending on which century she's in.
Dangerous Ishhq is an epic love story that repeats itself from 1535 to the present because in each era the lovers are thwarted. We begin in contemporary times. Sanjana, played by Kapoor, is a supermodel in a relationship with Rohan, an industrialist played by Rajneesh Duggal. Rohan gets kidnapped and Sanjana starts to get visions of her past lives. Her best friend, a doctor, declares: I think we need a doctor of another kind. After which we get a solemn lecture on the validity of past-life regression and Sanjana starts to ask questions like: How can I meet my soul?
It would have been smarter to ask: Why did I sign this film? Dangerous Ishhq is essentially cheesy B-grade material treated with deathly seriousness but becomes unintentionally funny. In the second half, we even get a sorceress, fashionably dressed in black with silver accessories, who casts spells by squeezing lemons into water. All of this is done in inconsistent 3D so blurry shots and shadows add to your woes. As does Duggal's consistently expressionless face.
Kapoor is an attractive woman who tries earnestly to make sense of this time-warped story. But it is a Herculean task. Dangerous Ishhq proves to be dangerous indeed.