Guru

Movie wise: [3/5]
Commercially : i really dont care
Songs : [3/5]
Why watch? - goes good with popcorn!

I dont follow the hype and 'wait' for movies so my expectations are never elevated. Guru is a decent movie. Only in one song (Jodi) i suddenly felt a drag in the movie. Otherwise its allright.
The deal with Guru is that its a big story cut short. Too much to tell in a short time. So, many details that you would have wanted would be avoided. Makes sence - to handle time.
One thing that was handled well was the technical details of the 'business'. If he would have gone into a lot of detail, it would have sounded like Corporate, where so many 'technical business details' were unnecessary for the audience.
In many places, Guru was like nayakudu. You must have felt it too.
The only thing i had to put up with was Aishwarya. She should quit movies. She should'nt have come to movies in the first place. Abhishek sounded and looked like Amitabh toward the end in the court scene. I was surprised and kind of liked it. Such simmilarity! Afterall they are father and son.
On the whole, the movie was even. Atleast it didnt earn a 'bad' review from me.

Overall : Among the chaos of crap, this movie is worth a watch

With that said, if you want to know how I felt, read on.

Mani Ratnam has this idiosyncrasy of doing the same thing again and again. Till he does it again.
His first genre started with Roja then went on with Bombay,Dil Se till he finally buried it with Amrutha. Overkill dude! How do you manage to make movies with the same theme again and again? Anyway, then he started Yuva. Just when you thought he was getting sober, he makes Guru. What next? Women rights?
The screenplay is pretty standard through most of his movies. I have noticed that his movies have a very usual style of conversation between the hero and the bad folks. They speak with a smile on their face but basically say what they have to. (Example, a scene in Yuva where Mike talks to the minister about his scholarhip - or - when guru talks to Nanaji and is assistant about unmasking him etc). I think given a theme and the charecters, I can do some basic reverse engineering and guess how he would make the movie. He has become too obvious.
Like many directors and writers, he still is not able to get out of the excitement of watching The Godfather. These guys actually do pretty good job. I think they will come out with a book soon - "101 ways to remake The Godfather" (also read- "101 ways to fuck up The Godfather")

I'll have a full blog soon on this issue and more on Mani ratnam and my favorite topic - "Why Ram Gopal Verma is a Bozo"