Shaka Laka Boom Boom

Went over to see Shaka Laka Boom Boom, and must say this is probably the first Suneel Darshan movie I didn't hate as much as his Raja Hindustani not that that is much of a compliment.

Summary
A faithful rip-off of Milos Forman's Amadeus, SLBB is the story of AJ (an aged Bobby Deol), who is a popular singer/composer based in NY. He has had 5 consecutive chart-topping albums, and is working on his next one. Bobby is backed by the owner of a music company (Dalip Tahil, with a pierced right ear) whose wife has the hots for him.
He meets Ruhi (Kangana Ranaut) and falls head over heels in love with her.
Reggie (Upen Patel, probably ashamed of his real name, Raghav) is from the underground music scene, who is supposed to have a large amount of talent (not much, going by the tunes bandied around).
Upen seduces Bobby's PR person Sheena (Celina Jaitley) and then promptly ditches her after getting introduced to the company's top brass.
Bobby is upstaged on a number of occasions by Upen, and realizes that Upen is a much better composer. What proves to be the last straw is that Kangana falls in love with Upen, making an emotional wreck of Bobby.
He decides to get back at Upen and enlists the help of Celina who holds a huge grudge because she has been spurned by Upen.
Thus starts the fight between ruthless power and supposed talent (Yawn!).

Actors
Upen is wooden as always and is unintentionally hilarious when he is supposed to play a sick guy. His comic scenes; on the other hand leave you cold. He is probably the only guy alive who can get acting tips from Steven Seagal.
Kangana Ranaut looks distinctly uncomfortable essaying a role where she doesn't have to play the wronged girl, or cry her heart out throughout the movie. So she makes do with a constantly puzzled frown on her face.
Celina Jaitley provides the eye-candy, as usual coupled with deadpan dialog delivery which amuses us no end.
All these guys end up making Bobby the best actor of the lot, and he does show potential in quite a few scenes. Now if only he did something about those dreadful dreadlocks of his.
Govind Namdeo has a few redundant and repetitive scenes as Bobby's guru.

Technique
Suneel Darshan, for a change goes a little low on the traditions front, but makes it up by turning the dialogs a tad louder. As in all Darshan movies, actors shriek their lines instead of mouthing them; which is the reason why this movie is literally loud, not just in terms of treatment, but in terms of decibels too.
Since the movie is supposed to be about music, the composer takes center screen, taking over from the director. Himesh Reshammiya in usual style comes up with 1-2 hummable tunes, with the rest as fillers (please note that I consider myself musically deaf, so not much credence should be given to my musical judgment.) The English lyrics for the title song have to be heard to be believed.
Choreography by Bosco-Caesar is normal, and if I could have got my eyes off Celina, I might have been able to comment better on that aspect.
Background music by Viju Shah is shrill, and I refuse to believe it was his idea to put in a background score which sounds like a porn movie whenever a racy scene is on the screen.
There are a large number of goofs in the movie, and some are truly astounding.
Bobby's supposed house has a large number of frames shown in the background, which clearly have Upen's photos on them. This is witnessed in a number of scenes (Bobby fantasizing about Upen???).
Also, in two scenes, an hour apart (so the timeline is a good six-months apart), Upen's friend is seen with the same tabloid (with the headline: Dumb and Dumber) in his hands (probably the headline points to this guy himself... slow-reader anyone???).

Trivia

1. Sanaa Panscholi (Aditya Panscholi's daughter) was supposed to debut with this movie. But she was shunted out by Darshan after a few days of shooting as he was not pleased with her output. Interestingly, Kangana was brought in to replace her (Aditya Panscholi is supposed to have an affair with Kangana, and he is the one who brought her into the film world).
2. Isha Koppikar and Mona Chopra (now known as Sherlyn Chopra) were also attached to this project at a point of time. Isha was supposed to act the role of Dalip Tahil's wife, and Mona was to be Kangana's friend.
3. There's a song which was supposed to be shot on Upen Patel for a cost of Rs. 2.5 crores. None of the songs shows such lavishness.
4. Suneel Darshan reportedly had trouble paying his bills in South Africa (where this movie was shot) and there were labor issues due to this.
5. At one point of time Suneel Darshan was trying to promote SLBB as a story of the rivalry between Amitabh and SRK. This presumption of his was shot down by both his lead stars in their interviews.
6. Suneel Darshan has been so impressed with Upen that he has already signed him for two more films, one of which will be a solo-hero project.

Opinion
Can be seen by people who have been able to tolerate Raja Hindustani and Dhadkan. This is certainly a notch above those horror stories. In the absence of any other options this week, it's the only way out for people addicted to watching movies in theaters. For everyone else, avoidable.