Armaan
Saw the movie Armaan on the first day of its release.
Well... consider it not to be too disappointing, but not too great either.
Debutant director Honey Irani disappoints, as the expectations from her were sky high.
The movie is set in a hospital that looks like a guest house in some hillstation like Simla. Seems like they went through a lot of efforts to make the jargon sound right. Got a Pune doctor on the sets full time to get the right medical terms in place.

Synopsis
This is the story of Padmabhushan Dr. Siddharth Sinha (Amitabh Bachchan in a stellar performance) and his adopted son Dr. Akash Sinha (Anil Kapoor looking as young as ever), a neuro-surgeon. The senior doctor Sinha runs a hospital, and has a dream of making it state of the art (The promos mentioned a lot about his wanting to have a big hospital that serves the rich and the poor equally. This philanthropic angle is not seen in the movie). They are approaching many financial institutions and the health ministry to make this a reality. Enter Dr. Neha Mathur (Gracy Singh, alternately looking good and bad throughout the movie), a skilled anesthetist, who proves her worth to the hospital as soon as she comes in. Anil and Gracy waste no time falling in love and get over with the basics pretty soon. Amitabh gets to know of his son's love, and gives his approval.
In this made for each other love story, comes in Soniya Kapoor (Preity Zinta with a horrible hair cut that does injustice to her great looks.), a rich spoilt girl, who falls in love with Anil.
Seems like her rich dad Gulshan Kapoor (Randhir Kapoor in the worst performance of his life); who is supposed to be one of the top ten rich people of the world, has fulfilled all desires of his darling daughter. Same old explanation of "Mere paas use dene ke liye time ke sivaa sab kuchch tha"(I could give her everything except my time).
At this point of time, Amitabh conveniently kicks the bucket in a very well shot scene. This brings the burden of refurbishing the hospital on Anil, who soon discovers that his foster father had sacrificed his love to bring him up.
Now, this calls for a sacrifice on Anil's part. The opportunity soon arises when he gets to know that Randhir had given a proposition to Amitabh for marrying off Anil to Preity, which would ensure the fulfillment of Amitabh's life long dream of running a state of the art hospital.
Anil agrees to marry Preity, and disposes off Gracy in a short and sweet scene. After the marriage, Preity gets to know of the affair that existed between Gracy and Anil, and starts getting suspicious. Anil blows off his handle a number of times due to this, and the situation gets out of hand when Preity does not let Gracy contact Anil; resulting in the death of Gracy's mother.
Out to get revenge for Anil's ditching her, Preity gets into an accident, and Anil and Gracy need to carry off an operation to save her.
This entitles a matrix style shot of Anil and Amitabh (Neo and Morpheus) debating the ethics of the operation.
The ending is an "All's well that ends well" kind.

Analysis
The movie has some well shot scenes, notable among them being:
1) The one where Amitabh discovers that Anil and Gracy are in love.
2) Amitabh's deathbed scene.
As always, Amitabh has come up with an amazing heart-moving performance. Ever the dedicated actor, Anil has given him good support. Gracy Singh is okay. Preity Zinta seems to grate on the nerves with her hairstyle and another performance that tries to show her bubbly side. The movie going public will soon get tired of her similar roles. She should utilise her immense talent in a better way with roles which do not require her to do the same act she has done right from her debut film Dil Se to Kya Kehnaa to The Hero.
Randhir Kapoor seems out of his element in this movie. He hams outrageously. Seeing such a great actor play a foolish role really upsets me.
Overall, the movie fails to impress with its long winded script, which gets thoroughly predictable in the second half.

Technique
The director Honey Irani has a reputation of writing storylines of stellar hits or at least well appreciated ones like Aaina, Lamhe, Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, Kya Kehna, DDLJ (For which she was not credited). This naturally generates high expectations from her directorial debut. Besides this, she has been assisted with the screenplay by none other than the great Javed Akhtar, her ex-husband.
Are the expectations fulfilled? Not exactly.
Editor Shirish Kunder needs to be blamed for a lot of the flak this movie might receive. The film could have reduced its flab by at least 20 minutes.
Choreography by Saroj Khan, Farah Khan and Geeta Kapur is nothing to write home about.
The music director trio of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy are not consistent in delivering good music. Two of the songs of the film are hummable, but none have a lasting value.
One notable piece is the musical duel between Amitabh and Anil, though it is stretched too long to be appreciated.
Dialogues from Javed Akhtar are pretty good, but none of them will probably be remembered beyond a month.

Verdict
Would I recommend this movie to someone?
That would depend on whether you are a great Amitabh Bachchan/Anil Kapoor fan or not. If you are one, this movie has some really great scenes in store for you.
Apart from that, if you want to see a movie which refrains from being overly melodramatic, and has its share of well shot scenes, this movie is for you.
For the rest, its a "watch if you dont have anything else to do" movie.

Special Mention
I would like to thank my friend Mr. Harish Ranganathan for his immense support. These reviews would not have been possible without his help.
I got more than 80 hits on the site within a short span of 4 days. All the credit goes to him to make this possible.