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Karisma is still sexy at seventy: The Times of India
New Delhi, Aug 29: She might be in the news due to her wedding plans, but Karisma Kapoor`s new avatar as a 70-year-old matriarch in her TV debut is no less striking.
New Delhi, Aug 29: She might be in the news due to her wedding plans, but Karisma Kapoor's new avatar as a 70-year-old matriarch in her TV debut is no less striking.
Film actors, lavish sets, foreign locales, song and dance in slow motion – the mother of all television soaps, Karishma – The Miracles of Destiny has all the masala of a Bollywood potboiler.
Add to that a title track by Anu Malik and styling by Manish Malhotra, two well-coveted names in tinselville.
But it's just not Bollywood that the series has taken a leaf out of. That is, if you dismiss the claims made by US-based bestselling author Barbara Taylor Bradford, who lost a case of plagiarism against Sahara Entertainment, the serial's producers.
Like most other popular soaps on other channels, this one has characters played by actors half the actual age, even less. Take the heroine Karisma Kapoor, for instance. The series opens with her as the 70-year-old patriarch Devyani Singh, whose success story is the stuff bestsellers are made of.
Two lines around the mouth, grey strokes on the hair and eyebrows, a jamevar thrown around the shoulder, eye glasses and cracked lips are all that take to transform the 29-year old Karisma into a grandmom.
Poor make up is complemented by a schmaltzy act by her in a deep-throated voice that does nothing to hide the fact that her sons are played by much older actors in real life.
A scheming bahu, disrespectful sons (one of them illegitimate), backstabbing and bickering - the staple of a daily soap are woven into this story of Devyani, whose metamorphosis from a rural teenager to a successful business tycoon forms the main plot.
When Devyani, the grandmother is not tackling her wayward children, she gets nostalgic about her love life. And you see a young Karisma cavorting with Bollywood flunkey Sanjay Kapoor (not to be mistaken with real life boyfriend Sunjay Kapur), hand in hand, dressed in head-to-toe black, running in slow motion to indifferent music.
You wonder if their marathon will take them to some distant land and a twisted tale, but no, the director cuts back to a brooding old Devyani, whose sons call her "Dev Ma".
Sure, episode three establishes one son is illegitimate, but does he have more than one mother that he needs to address her by the name? Unlikely that we will have the answer, since, logic and soaps were never known to go together.
And successful soaps these days count more on kismet, spelt with K. Going by the television ratings of serials beginning with K, Karishma – The Miracles of Destiny, despite all its limitations, might just turn out to be miraculous for its channel.
Add to that a title track by Anu Malik and styling by Manish Malhotra, two well-coveted names in tinselville.
But it's just not Bollywood that the series has taken a leaf out of. That is, if you dismiss the claims made by US-based bestselling author Barbara Taylor Bradford, who lost a case of plagiarism against Sahara Entertainment, the serial's producers.
Like most other popular soaps on other channels, this one has characters played by actors half the actual age, even less. Take the heroine Karisma Kapoor, for instance. The series opens with her as the 70-year-old patriarch Devyani Singh, whose success story is the stuff bestsellers are made of.
Two lines around the mouth, grey strokes on the hair and eyebrows, a jamevar thrown around the shoulder, eye glasses and cracked lips are all that take to transform the 29-year old Karisma into a grandmom.
Poor make up is complemented by a schmaltzy act by her in a deep-throated voice that does nothing to hide the fact that her sons are played by much older actors in real life.
A scheming bahu, disrespectful sons (one of them illegitimate), backstabbing and bickering - the staple of a daily soap are woven into this story of Devyani, whose metamorphosis from a rural teenager to a successful business tycoon forms the main plot.
When Devyani, the grandmother is not tackling her wayward children, she gets nostalgic about her love life. And you see a young Karisma cavorting with Bollywood flunkey Sanjay Kapoor (not to be mistaken with real life boyfriend Sunjay Kapur), hand in hand, dressed in head-to-toe black, running in slow motion to indifferent music.
You wonder if their marathon will take them to some distant land and a twisted tale, but no, the director cuts back to a brooding old Devyani, whose sons call her "Dev Ma".
Sure, episode three establishes one son is illegitimate, but does he have more than one mother that he needs to address her by the name? Unlikely that we will have the answer, since, logic and soaps were never known to go together.
And successful soaps these days count more on kismet, spelt with K. Going by the television ratings of serials beginning with K, Karishma – The Miracles of Destiny, despite all its limitations, might just turn out to be miraculous for its channel.