Marigold, an International film starring Salman Khan (as Prem, go figure??) and Ali Larter as Marigold, has been in the pipelines for years and years now. But finally the first signs of its arrival hits stands as the soundtrack by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy released last week.
But the music is anything but good. One would have expected fireworks from a trio such as S-E-L who has been given an opportunity to shine in international markets...but they've fallen flat on their face, composing some of the worse tracks of their career. Bottom-line, don't waste your money and time on the soundtrack of Marigold. Let's move on....
This film was a casualty of some hollywood studio politics where someone that okayed the marketing end, informally, left the studio by the time Mr Caroll made the film.(something similar seems to have happenned to mira nair's namesake during roughly the same time period,,,although I cant say authoritatively about that film) it's been kicking doors in hollywood for the last three years and now seems to have negotiated bollywood distribution channels. Bad marketing, if not business sense more than the intrinsic merits of the film...which are pretty good if you askeds me...
I have seen the film and the music work beautifully in it. It's not the greatest bollywood track and willard, even though he pays some lip sevice to the genre conventions, is no bollywood filmmaker...he's made the movie like a walt disney musical ( for example, like the one where Hillary duff goes to italy and has adventures there) , Salman khan actually speaks credible understandable english(uh,,,,go figure?) and the Romance angle works pretty good.( remember salman khan was 37 when they made this film)
Give the movie a chance,the music...what he said...
It's waited for a release longer than two years in it's current form.(it used to have two more songs and was at least an hour and a half longer initially.
Edited to add: I wonder if Wes Anderson's film, Darjeeling Company (starting to do the festival circuit in Late September) will suffer the same fate....
The Namesake will be released on DVD in USA on November 27. As for Marigold, I have no idea when that will be "officially" released. Of course there's no shortage of pirated copies floating around the net.