Sonam Kapoor has 'it' -- that indefinable something that is not talent, or looks, or voice, or anything you can put a name to but which can, given the right circumstances, strike sparks off an audience. In fact, she has so much of 'it' that it shows even despite Bhansali's best attempts to reduce her to a cardboard cutout.
She lives in a haveli with a blind grandmother who keeps her captive through the wildly original medium of outsize safety pins, and an aunt or some such about whom the less said the better. The family business is making carpets; at this, the family is a disastrous failure, judging by the rows upon rows of unsold, dust-covered carpets that Sonam beats up with a stick when she is particularly frustrated by the atrocities the script inflicts on her.
The role requires her to run the gamut of expressions from A to B. There are times when she giggles and there are times when she cries, and there are times when she gigglers and cries at the same time, creating facial effects that would have interested the late Marcel Marceau.
Like Ranbir, she is more to be pitied than censured; it is not her fault that her debut vehicle turned out to be a leaky boat.
Also read: Hyperactivity and humour with Sonam Kapoor
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