If there ever was a war fought for so many lost causes, then it would have to be this tale of the great mogul retold in the most insipid manner with as many historical fantasies as a phantasmagoria mind can conjure, never mind it is miscast, misconceived and misdirected from the word go.  Akbar is Mr Roshan who looks like a steroid gym bunny with the squeaky voice of a mouse, who spends his spare time taming toothless elephants and doing some  bizarre ninja routines with his shirt off in the palace courtyard a LA Jackie Chan, his virginal wife is a Rajput princess who is married against her will as a political pawn, but insists on keeping her virginity for some unexplained reasons, while singing devotional songs, badly tuned by Mr.A.R.Rehman, who also is responsible for the most inept background musical score in a historical epic, it varies from screeching to plain out of tune Qawawalis, poor Jodhaa (Aish) is left a sulking virgin as a result of a deadly misunderstanding created by Akbar’s protective wet nurse, played awfully by Ila Arun in easily the worst performance since stone age, as the bride is sent packing back home, a horde of political conspiracies are being hatched by the vamp and villain and this becomes a typical Bollywood formula of boy meets girl, loses girl, sings songs and live happily ever after, but frankly by that time I was too fed up to endure this audio-visual torture and it is a royal torture in the true sense as it is over 3 hours long, with a mix of everything that Hollywood and Bollywood have made since 1940 in the name of historical epics. 

The script borrows shamelessly from Troy to Mughal-E-Azam to Meera, except come up with some really decent dialogue or even a remotely dramatic sense of proportion, the supporting cast looks more like a motley gang of clowns from a circus then a royal court and the Urdu accents are atrocious with almost every dialogue being flawed , the queen mum is kept standing in the court while Akbar and his courtiers feast seated, and we are talking of the queen Hameeda Bhano, who has a magnificent edifice built in her memory by her son in Delhi,she is emperor hamuyuns widow and is dressed like a bride in every scene with every piece of jewelery india is capable of conceiving from a jhomar to panjangla the factual distortion is so screwed up you can’t even say they are loopholes, in fact it’s a canal through which you can sail the Titanic, but that shipping disaster is nothing compared to this humourless, dry as a bone epic, devoid of any juice or spice, this is even worse the last years Taj Mahal and that was bad enough. 

This is total hokum with sets which look like colours smudged onto the screen as if the moguls, who built wonders like taj would bear to even go near these Technicolor idiosyncrasies which resemble the abodes of common nautch girls then the great Sheesh Mahal, so painstakingly re-constructed by the great K. Asif for Mughal-E-Azam, shame on Gowarikar and everyone associated with this third rate rip off, Mr. Roshan take some elocution and acting lessons, for its simply not enough to just have a hunky physique to make it as a HOLLYWOOD hopeful, you also need some God given talent, which both Mrs Bachchan and Mr Roshan are badly in need of, but unfortunately talent does not grow on trees. 

But what perplexed me was the sheer magnitude of this folly, the rasoi scene is lifted from Gulzar’s Meera(80), the battle scenes from TROY, and by an acclaimed director who has made a quality movie called Swades a few years ago, the conspiracies are all copied badly from Razia Sultan[85], and if that movie was accused along with Ashoka and Mangal Pandey of historical distortion, then this is a blasphemy from the infantile mind of a day dreamer, just place Ash-Hrithik against Durga Khote and Prithvi Raaj and close your eyes and then tell me if these two are not maxim or Elle caricatures of those royals who are dubbed great by even the western historians.
 
The period details are so silly as to be hilarious as Sharif Uddin, the villain emerges from a Turkish bath wearing a mere Calvin Klein underwear to display his muscular frame, as it seems Hrithik and this other muscle ape were busy comparing and gazing at each other’s pectorals, rather than concentrating on their nonexistent histrionic talent, Aishwariya is also wearing choli blouses like bras to show her assets which we have seen enough in mistress of spices without any regard for the honour of a great Hindu queen from Rajputana, who were traditionally trained to burn themselves on their husbands funeral pyre.
 
As for the characters of Mann Singh, Jodhas brother who was the brain behind the match, Gowarikar has forgotten to mention him except in reference to a few dialogues and Gulbadan Bhano, Akbar’s brilliant sister, who is accredited by even western historians as being one of the most brilliant minds in Indian history is totally absent, so ash can display her cholis and plunging  low necklines, and add to that a silly  voiceover by Mr.Bachchan himself and the party is complete with the dinner totally burnt and the dishes placed in front of Akbar cooked by Jodha are just as cold as the frigid actress playing Jodha, for notice the emperor eating a cold meal like yesterdays hors de aoveurs, but then this is the result of total incompetency by the whole team and that includes the worst musical score ever given by A.R .Rehman and I thought that was legend of Shaheed Bhagat singh. 

This movie reminds me of an English nursery rhyme:

 sing a song of six pence

 a movie full of flies

 when the pie was opened

 the flies began to sing

 wasn’t that a filthy dish

 to set before a king

At last poor Akbar and Jodha must be turning in their graves at this sheer folly which will bore the hell out of even the most ardent Bollywood fan.
 
A royal flop only equaled by Taaj Maahal (Akbar Khans disgusting magnum opus) and Duttas notoriously bad Umraao Jaan, and some critics have the cheek to say Urdu has been simplified in this movie, a beautiful language which is a world heritage, evolved in India over 500 years is now going to be re-invented by the likes of ignorant Bollywood critics and hopeless directors who can’t even spell their name titles right. May God, Allah and Om have mercy on us and them too.