Tera Mera Saath Rahen

Overwhelmingly over-senti'mental' stuff that makes you feel like you've collided with a stationary truck coming the other way is what Tera Mera Saath Rahen is made up of. But hang on, it does have Namrata Shirodkar getting pregnant. And having suitably aroused your interest, we now go on to describe how without much ado.

Raj (Ajay Devgan) is a solemn young man who gives God a run for his money in altruism by the "spoon feeding, washing soiled bedclothes and cleaning potty" (as repeatedly vocalised by Raj himself) of his neurologically imbalanced brother Rahul (Dushyanth Wagh). For fifteen long years. Then all of a sudden his self-abnegating attitude recollects an economics lesson from Standard 12 as he falls in love with Madhuri (Sonali Bendre). The law of diminishing marginal utility now fully recalled, has Raj send Rahul to an institution for the mentally challenged while he plans to get married.

But how can chicken pox be complete without the zillion sore blemishes and all their irritation? Accordingly we have Shivaji Satam, Reema Lagoo and Namrata Shirodkar with a 'society' (in the unadulterated Mumbai sense of the word) of other jokers making us realize through the course of the film why people prefer watching Kyonki Saans Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi in the quiet of their homes. Suman (Namrata Shirodkar), in love with Raj herself, gets turned down by him because his crayons all melted together, and that makes her sleep with another man.

Anyways, Raj manages to realize that his life is worthless without Rahul, and so brings him back home. By this time you're already wondering why you hadn't run away to Yugoslavia with that foreign exchange student named Basal Metabolism. The ordeal finally ends with Rahul pleading Madhuri to stay with them while the extras with dewy eyes applaud Ulysses' return to Troy. And thus they live happily ever after.

Ajay Devgan and Dushyanth Wagh are brilliant in their roles. Sonali tries while Namrata Shirodkar comes, sees and mothers. The rest of the cast was not needed in the first place.

Hanging upside down from a tree and making noises like a banana would attract more monkeys than audiences to this overemotional drag. The genius(?) of Mahesh Manjrekar is only just sensed in the sequences featuring the inbreeding of Rahul in the institution. But what Manjrekar was aiming through the film is achieved by the music: causing the viewers to feel depressed.

To be fair, it is an honest, different attempt on the part of the director, but the movie is for the emotional provocation of people that believe artificial insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull. The others can sit at home and count the bristles of their toothbrushes.