September 1, 2008 - For planning a movie on Indian rock, for assigning the film's task to a one-film old director, for taking the risk of playing the lead role and being courageous enough to sing, the Actor of the Week crown goes to Farhan Akhtar.

'Rock On!!" has earned rave reviews, and rightly so.

At the end of the day, it is a feel-good film, told without too many pretensions and featuring people who do not come across as actors or stars.

There is a strong real-life quotient to the movie, which makes you want to love it, despite the cinematic clichés in the second half.

If in a largely empty hall on a Saturday afternoon in Dubai, the 20-odd youngsters who came to watch the movie should clap along with Purab Kohli singing Gloria Gaynor's 'I will survive,' surely, here is a movie that connects.
 
And connect, the film's protagonists do big time.

On the lines of 'Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na' and much like what Farhan Akhtar's Aditya Shroff says in 'Rock On!!', no one gets bigger than the film in its totality – except perhaps Jason West, the cinematographer, who is an unseen hero of the film.
 
For the larger responsibility that Farhan Akhtar takes on himself with 'Rock On!!' – he co-produces it, is one of the leads and sings virtually all the Indi-Rock songs  – quite obviously the spotlight of scrutiny too falls on him.

It is not easy to come out unscathed when you have a bunch of reviewers, mostly coming in with the prejudice of wanting to write you off.
 
He had got a taste of it when critics declared their displeasure with his voice and his stylised 'Ro-yeah' crooning which, they felt, butchered the Hindi language.
 
But to his credit, Farhan holds his fort in 'Rock On!!'
 
His isn't a role written to push him into celebratory stardom – in fact his Adi has too many flaws – which are so refreshingly honest.

He is shown to walk out on his fiancée, he doesn't 'really really' stand up for his friends, he could be construed as selfish and the bitter Adi is too moronic to be loved. And he isn't the finest of singers in the country, for all practical purposes. So if he you haven't listened to the songs on 'original CDs' (don't download them, the film's closing credit reminds you), and if you walk in to the theatre totally unprepared, the untrained vocals of Farhan can initially be a thoroughly non-Bollywood experience. More