Producer: Vashu Bhagnani
Director: Anupam Kher
Cast: Anil Kapoor, Fardeen Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Mahima Choudhary, Urmila Matondkar
Music: Anu Malik

This is Anupam Kher' directorial debut, it also happens to be Waheeda Rehman’s comeback movie. However Om Jai Jagdish is one of those run of the mill mellow dramatic family dramas we have been seeing over the ages, however with a little twist called modernity. So here we go: Om (Anil Kapoor), the eldest, works in a music company. He is the upright moral crusader who has to fight music pirates, conniving bosses and ungrateful artistes. Jai (Fardeen Khan) is the glitzy toy boy. He looks gorgeous, speaks heavily accented Hindi, hangs around with an omnipresent American friend, studies automotive engineering in Atlanta, and never forgets to say his prayers every day.

And yeah, he dreams of making the fastest car in the world. (As an aside, why are Hindi films so removed from reality? Dreams of fastest cars by Indians who only hope the roads they travel on every day need not get too pockmarked in the rains!) Jagadish (Abhishek Bachchan) is the cyber geek with all the right values. He is a computer whiz who seamlessly weaves in and out of his university computers. With a 'Bill Gates, here I come' attitude, he dreams of creating an alternative to the Windows operating system. The cyber world finally comes of age in Hindi cinema.

The trio live in a sprawling house, Gulmohar Villa, with their mother Saraswati (Waheeda Rehman) and ooze love, affection and ditto touchy feely things for each other. The snake in the grass is Neetu (Urmila Matondkar), Jai's NRI ladylove who wants to him to settle down in the US rather than India, which goes against Om's dreams of a happy joint family. Neetu pressurises Jai to return to the US, while Jagadish is thrown out of university after he hacks the exam papers.

Woe befalls Om when his boss Shekhar (Parmeet Sethi) throws him out of Gulmohar Villa in lieu for the money Om had borrowed for Jai's education. But yeah, yeah, finally it is a happy ending. No surprises there. Sure enough, Kher's directorial debut in <>Om Jai Jagdish is as giddying and utopian as family sagas in films go. Kher and his writer Rahul Nanda are full of ennobling ideas. A whole spectrum of cultural contemplations are brought into play -- from traditional joint-family values to the rapidly growing relevance of computer technology, to the evil of remixed songs that have swamped the music industry and brain drain as young, ambitious Indians make a permanent home abroad.

Being his first film, one understands Kher's eagerness to suffuse drama with ideas on culture and society. But these don't fit into the family drama format. And one ends up looking at several stories told all at once. Some of the characters, though interesting, are clearly redundant. Mahima Chowdhary and newcomer Tara Sharma, who play Anil Kapoor's wife and Abhishek Bachchan's girlfriend respectively, have no direct bearing on the main conflict. Similarly Fardeen's yankee-accented American friend. He's an interesting shadowy character, but what's he meant to signify?

Raj Khosla's trendsetting family drama Do Raaste is scriptwriter Rahul Nanda's primary source of inspiration. Then we also have inspirations being drawn from Manoj Kumar's Purab Aur Paschim, with Raju Kher and Lilette Dubey playing the expatriate Indians. Waheeda Rehman's comeback, though welcome, is a little disappointing. While she's wonderful in her emotional moments, she seems ill at ease in the lighter scenes.

Anil Kapoor drips nobility as the all-giving elder brother. As the man torn between his wife and family, Fardeen portrays the tense moments well. As the bratty Jagdish, Abhishek displays his skills in diffident close-ups. One piece of advice though, like father like son, Abhishek will have to discover his own style at dancing, dance director and choreographers may not be of much help to him. Once done like his pa he would have to stick with it.

Among the ladies, only Urmila Matondkar makes a strong impact. In a role that could easily have careened into playing a vamp she excels in walking the tightrope. Apoorva Agnihotri's trademark jump cut editing that's so effective in thrillers is out of place in this linear family drama. Anu Malik's music is listless. Fortunately Kher makes sparing use of it.

Overall a watchable movie, especially when sitting with the whole family.