Wednesday, December 2, 2009

MUSIC REVIEW: Roadside Romeo


Not pathbreaking. But apt for an animation flick

Some may say that movie soundtracks need not be outstanding all the time. They believe, the singers come out with their personal music albums for exactly that reason. And that's because, songs from a film need to belong to the film. It needs to be complementary to the story and the feeling that is unique to that film and that film only. The soundtrack of Yash Raj's first animation flick directed by Jugal Hansraj and co-produced by Walt Disney is exactly that.

Roadside Romeo is an animation film about the love story of two cool dogs. And when you listen to the soundtrack, you can almost see the cute creatures dancing to them. Take the doggy characters out, and the songs will fall flat.

By saying that, we don't mean that the songs are bad. They are cute, peppy and a lot of fun. But they are not unique on their own. They are nothing different from the tunes that we keep hearing these days. Every song sounds like something that we might have already heard. But listen to it carefully and think of the dogs who will be mouthing them, and all of a sudden the songs become more interesting.

Keeping in mind the main target audience of the film, the lyrics by Jaideep Sahni have been kept sweet and simple with a lot of English words sprinkled generously throughout. The tunes by Salim-Suleiman are good too. It's youthful with a lot of beats and technical sound effects. At times, the songs will remind you of Vishal-Shekhar's Salaam Namaste songs.

For instance, the title track, Main Hoon Romeo sung by Kunal Ganjawala is peppy, spunky and suits a dog with oodles of attitude.

Though Ganjawala has done justice to his numbers, the surprise singing sensation in the entire album is Jaaved Jaffrey. Yes, he has sung. And so has our cool Romeo Saif Ali Khan. The song Cool Cool is perhaps the coolest number in the album and that's primarily because of the special something added to it by these two actors.

The song starts with this cool beat on which you can almost see the dogs moonwalking full on MJ style. And Saif comes in with his uber cool accent. But Jaaved with his South Indian accent and broken English takes the cake…and eats it too, presumably in his dark alley corner.

The coolest thing about this album is that the songs sound like a part of the story. In Cool Cool you can almost see Anna and Romeo fighting over Laila and in Apni Dum Bhi Oonchi Ho you can see Romeo and his doggy friends trying to be cool and all. You will almost know the characters once you are through with the album. At least the three main characters – Romeo, Anna and Laila.

But one thing that is true for all the songs in the album is that - just take the characters out of them and they lose their charm. Its like, when you are listening to the album with the pictures of these cute doggy characters in front, the songs make a lot of sense and you'll probably listen to them for curiosity sake if not anything else. Take the picture out and it suddenly becomes background score.

And also, apart from probably the Cool Cool song, the title track Main Hoon Romeo and Apni Dum Bhi Oonchi Ho, the others sound like a rehash of the more youthful Yash Raj flicks like Salaam Namaste and Neil N Nikki.

In short, the songs are not like that of Tashan or any other film which work in spite of the film failing miserably. They are definitely pleasant but not path breaking. The songs do not somehow have the capacity of selling the film. But if the film sells, the soundtrack will too.

VERDICT: If you are five to 10 years of age (even those at heart will do) or know somebody who is, take them for the movie and buy them the album afterwards. It's a nice album no doubt but definitely not a keepsake for others.

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