Josh - Movie Review

Published: July 22, 2009

By JENNIFER HOPFINGER

Starring Shahrukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Chandrachur Singh, Sharad Kapoor, Priya Gill

Director Mansoor Khan takes the classic American musical West Side Story and turns it into a distinctly Indian tale. While West Side Story harkens back to America’s past, Josh is relevant to contemporary India—with its many contentious ethnic and religious factions—and the film is therefore imbued with an immediacy and realism that’s missing from the Broadway musical. The hint of 1950s fashion in Josh is one of the few reminders of the original’s excessive artifice.

 

Josh takes place in Goa, a city on the western coast of India that was colonized by the Portuguese, and many Goans are Catholic and have European names. The rival gangs in this adaptation are Catholic and Hindu. Max (played by Shahrukh Khan) is the leader of the Catholic gang and Prakash (Sharad Kapoor) is the leader of the Hindu gang. Prakash’s sensitive younger brother, Rahul (Chandrachur Singh), who has just returned from studying in Mumbai and wants nothing to do with the gang, falls in love with Max’s twin sister, Shirley (Aishwarya Rai). Rahul abandons his original plan of returning to Mumbai to open a restaurant and opens a bakery in Goa instead in order to stay close to her. Shirley doesn’t return his feelings at first, but she soon realizes he’s an appealing, refined alternative to the toughs in her life, namely her brother.

 

Max and Shirley are extremely close, as twins are wont to be, and super-macho Max—played to perfection by Khan—is overly protective of his siren of a sister. (Having the two biggest stars in the film play siblings instead of lovers is an interesting casting twist.) Max has a romantic interest of his own, Rosanne (Priya Gill), but it’s a minor diversion from the main story. The gangs fight over the smallest of slights and Rahul’s interest in Shirley gets added to the list.

 

The Indian version interestingly diverges from the American original with a complicating subplot about a shameful family secret—involving the twins’ parentage, uncovered by Rahul—and the reverberations of colonialism.  

Josh is rated Must See.

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