Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Absolutely amazing

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

A quality period drama film with lavish sets. The film manages to hold audience attention, however, the ending leaves much to be desired. Battle scenes used CGI and looked artificial. Some good dialogues & performances by Ranvir, Deepika & Priyanka is probably drawing the crowds. A pain to sit through and a benchmark for lavish failures. And to top it all, such garbage receives awards.

Felt like writing a review before the directors next release. Have seen this tripe when it first released. Revisited it on a DVD. This film is both a costly epic and a fantasy turkey biography, not to mention a miserable n failed attempt at creating a story to overtake Romeo n Juliet n Mughal e Azam. Even at nearly 160 minutes long, this ponderous, talky, and melodramatic biopic fails to impress. The critics in India are just impressed with the sets and costumes. Agree, the movie was grand with its look, the sets erected were lavish, the cinematography by Sudeep Chatterjee was splendid but if the film is boring, then cinematography ain't enough to save a disaster. As one reviewer on IMDb rightly said about the mess. The director has no clue whether he is making a 17th century historical epic or a Rohit Shetty flick or a fantasy action epic or romantic melodrama or erotic poem here. Watch the scene with Priyanka. Straight outta Kamasutra. Every historical epic film will have a battle or action sequence. Well, this film has only two, one in the beginning n the other towards the end. But the worst part is not the less amount of battle sequences, it is the execution. Very disappointed by Bhansali's handling of the battle sequences. The cgi/sfx were poorly done as the graphics were looking fake. The battle sequences were laughable. It reduced the lead character into a fantasy super hero. The first scene copied straight outta 300 and Ong bk. The other battle sequence was more like a Rajnikant style. Thousands of arrows and the single hand defense tactic was a laugh out loud n WTF. This movie even fails as a historical fantasy. Mastani playing a mandolin. Hohoho. Mandolin existed in India during that time? A prime minister/military leader dancing with the infantry n cavalry. Hohoho. That was hilarious. The moves. Maybe the military leader was on Datura given to him by some god man. Wait, i forgot about the dialogues. Cheesy ones mate. Referring one another as vegetables n fruits was epic. That too, in Nana Patekars voice. The rest of the movie is dreadful, a clunker script delivered in a cluster of accents. The accents were silly. Nowhere do we get to see Bajirao or his first wife speak in the Marathi language. May be they were promoting Hindi our National language during that era. In short, this film is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. This film is a bloated, overlong, and frankly boring epic. It is a rather slow because of the horrendous editing n at times tedious and soporific film that is far away from being great.

It is heartening to see that regional cultures and languages are being integrated to create a unified body of literature.The most commendable aspect about this movie the linguistic detailing . It was impressive to watch Ranvir Singh delivering dialogue with a appropriate demeanour. However, as always , bollywood reverts to the browbeaten track of glorifying "Love" or as we can safely say " Filmy Love" .Given the solid introduction depicting Baji Rao as a resolute leader and patriot , it seems strange that the director allows weakly developed love angle to hijack the story , abruptly. The individual performances are quite alright , but the story line is rather weak . I am not sure regarding the historical accuracy of the plot and hence would not comment upon it. The movie could have been much better had it been been focused. Still, It is a one time watch . Not a bad effort but then not a stupendous one either.

It was difficult for me to give this movie scores because for cinematography I would give 8 or 9. But for script, acting and directing i would give 3 or 4. The movie has breathtaking visuals but because it is not backed up with a good quality script and visionary directing, even the visuals fail to save the movie half-way through. I do not know about the actors, they depend so much on the director and editing. Talented actor can do a brilliant job under a brilliant director and embarrassing job under a mediocre director. The movie starts off well, and for about first ten minutes I thought that we have an Indian counterpart to "Crouching tiger." However, after about a third of the movie, cracks in the script and overall concept start to show and drag down the movie. Even the stellar cinematography that carries on all the way through fails to compensate for poor storytelling, poor psychological directing and conceptual inconsistency. The movie becomes pathetic and ridiculous half way through. What is the director trying to tell us with his pretentious epic? Baji Rao and his wife lived a perfectly happy life when turned up a naturally-born home wrecker, Miss Mastani, a historic female ninja from 16th or 17th century. Baji Rao did not approach, provoke or seduce her in any way. On the contrary, the general tried to fend her off several times - kudos to him for that,he tried harder than men usually do in that situation - but Miss Mastani simply wont give up. You close the door, she climbs in from window. Close the window, she descends through the chimney. If you ask me, she was a historic "bunny boiler".No wonder even the general finally gave up and, oh well, fell in love with her. Still, he tried to protect his relationship with his first wife, saying that Mastani can only be the "other woman". Generals first wife as portrayed in the film was smart, good natured, loving, spectacularly sexy and beautiful. Why would Baji need another woman if his wife already had everything that a man could wish for?The way Mastani wrecked first wife's homely bliss was simply heartless and incredibly selfish. And Mastani also wrecked Bajis military career, his position in the society and Bajis relations with all people who genuinely cared about him. Under Mastanis influence he became also selfish, reckless,moody and irrational. And yet somehow we are supposed to see Mastani as a victim of injustice? God forbid of such women in real life - all women with husbands or boyfriends, guard yourselves! All this unlikable concept was also told in a very pathetic over-the top style which became ridiculous in the end. But the worst part of the movie was music. For some reason the director decided to compose all his music by himself. Mr. Bhansali, please do not do it again! Save our ears!