Good concept, poorly executed.

best movie i've ever seen.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Although the movies have evolved a lot in terms of technicality, good stories are still in a dearth. Especially the literary quality has been a missing gem in the modern cinema. In the B/W era, the film makers like Bimal Roy adapted stories from novels of distinguished writers like Rabindranath Tagore and Saratchandra Chattopadhya and brought the essence of the novels on the screen.In the term, "Parineeta" fills the void to some extent. Well, you'll miss the literary essence of the novel in this film as it is set more into a modern day setting though the story is claimed to be of '60s. Based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhya's novel, "Parineeta" (literally meaning a married woman) tells the story of womanhood, friendship, commitment, and humanity and has been given a backdrop of three Bengali families living in a neighborhood of Calcutta. The story perpetuates a kind of interest throughout but the climax looks a bit bizarre. The period details and dialogues could have been better, Despite its shortcomings, the film is still welcome for the piece of rich literary work it recites. Besides, it notes a remarkable entry of one of the better actresses in Hindi Cinema, Vidya Balan.Rating: 2 stars out of 4

First of all I didn't like saif's character. All I saw was a jealous person and someone that is scared of his father. Also I noticed that saif's character was abusive. It's not about liking or disliking the character. It's about character development. Sail's character wasn't developed to an extent where the audience can connect with him or see his point of view. In other words his character was shallow. Saif and vidya's characters grew up together since childhood, but throughout the movie their relationships seems like they don't understand each other in a deep level. Their relationship seems artificial in a way. Vidya balans character was likable. Sanjay Dutts character was fine. However I think Sanjay looks too old to play the role. I didn't like him playing that role. It was creepy, made me dislike seeing him in the screen playing a young person role.

This is a badly made, poor remake of Bimalda's classic Parineeta. The story is based on Sarat Chandra's book of the same name and it is a distortion of the original. Well one can appreciate some degree of creativity but not sham creativity. The acting by everyone is affected and the entire movie is a sham. Shekar's father's choice of words in abusing Lolita ( Balan ) sounds cheap and morbid and destroys the spirit of the original story. Again the scene where Shekhar ( Saif ) slaps Lolita is quite out of place with the flow of the movie and the characters, is quite jarring to the senses, and could have been easily avoided. Similarly the sex scene between Saif and Balan is quite unbecoming the movie and a cheap gimmick to attract the audience. When a creative work is not faithful to the original and destroys it's spirit, the work falls apart. The song "piyu bole" is quite OK. Another silver lining in the dark cloud of this movie is the scene where Saif stands up for himself and rebels against his father. This is a positive departure from the original and deserves credit. On these counts this movie deserves 3 stars. The song and dance by Rekha smacks of artifice and it is a put on. The song is tuneful but I remember having heard it somewhere before and if Iam not mistaken the tune appears to have been plagiarized. Well, agreed the times have changed from then to now. But then this movie is not even reflective of the modern times.This is what happens when the modern Bollywood film makers get increasingly obsessed with impressing the NRIs and grabbing the lucrative NRI entertainment market. Such movies end up neither belonging to India nor to any other part of the world.

The movie's promos and songs looked promising but I did not hope much from the film as very few films live up to it's promos. I have read the story and the movie storyline tries to be faithful as much you can expect from 'adapted screenplay' Taking the story forward in time to 1960s seemed a masterstroke as you could show opulence and beautiful things on screen. The actors suited their characters except Sanjay Dutt. He looked elderly to both the actresses in the movie(Vidya Balan and Raima Sen). Both the actresses played out their parts well(Raima as pampered younger sister and Vidya as responsible girl-woman). Saif Ali Khan oscillated between neglected son, lover and a man who misunderstands his love. Rekha looked ethereal in her 3 minute role as bar club dancer and singer. One has praises for Sabyaschi for playing the role of money-hungry father who thinks his son's marriage nothing more than a business alliance. The music, cinematography,editing and direction were fair enough and loses steam only at end scene. Thanks to Parineeta I could see Calcutta in her old world charm again and I loved it.