#167: Prince

I know some of you will go - 'Yikes, this dude watches movies like Prince!' but like I always say, every movie is like a day in your life. It might be bad, good or ugly but one should never turn away from it. So that's my disclaimer to Prince, the 2010 movie starring Vivek Oberoi in the lead.

To be fair to Vivek Oberoi, he is not a bad actor. In Saathiya for example, he played the romantic lead as seamlessly as the wronged gangster Chandu in Company. And while he did make a few bad choices thereafter, potentially he could've been one of the most bankable stars in Bollywood even today. Prince was a comeback of sorts for Vivek because this was his first solo lead role after his 2005 debacle Kisna. The premise of that of an action hero who forgets his memory and has to trace his past in the midst of the 3 beauties was loose to begin with but if Jason Bourne can become a legend, why can't we have our very own Prince.. Well, the answer is that the Bourne series is written by someone as accomplished as Robert Ludlum.

While it might not be fair to cast aspersions of imitation on Shiraz Ahmed the writer, who I think has established himself as the greatest writer of 'thrillers-with-loopholes' in Bollywood, his work has been indubitably shaky in the past. These include duds like Naqaab and some mediocre fare like Race. It also didn't help that the directorial reins of the movie were vested in the hands of debutant Kookie Gulati. So here you had comeback man Vivek Oberoi with a story that was no great shakes in the hands of a rookie director. The overall result as you all would've guessed by now is unimpressive. What works for Prince (if there's such a thing) are the couple of foot-tapping numbers that will have you interested in between some eye-catching slick action sequences.

Vivek Oberoi does whatever he can do redeem this feature without much help from the three beauties serenading him. In terms of acting, Nandana Sen is the only one who comes close to the definition of talent amongst the three. Prince suffers from a weak storyline that doesn't excite you for more than five minutes at any one go. It does remind us in patches why Vivek used to be a reliable star not too long ago. But apart from that it's simply below par for the course.

Rating: 4.3/10