Dev.D - Should I watch it?

Loosely based on Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's 1917 Bengali novella Devdas, Kashyap updates Devdas for today's anti-authoritarian times by re-imagining him as a marijuana-using Punjabi guy Dev aka Devendra Singh Dhillon (Abhay Deol) who can't wait to consummate his relationship with his childhood sweetheart Paro aka Parminder (Mahi Gill).

Anurag Kashyap has not adapted Sharatchandra's Devdas. He has set it free from a shackles of old age India and given its characters a new life

For the first time in an adaption of Devdas, has any writer tried to delve into Chandramukhi's past. For the first time does any Indian movie talk so boldly about lust and sexual desires in a relationship and does not apologize about it. It brilliantly deals with our Indian double standards and hypocrisy without spelling it out or throwing it in your face.

For the brave and adventurous movie watcher this movie has a lot to offer - >Brilliant contemporary dialogues, > Well written strong central characters of Dev, Paro & Chanda, > Amit Trivedi's great soundtrack, > Rajeev Ravi's visually captivating cinematography, > Complimenting performances by Abhay (and also Mahi).

But thats about it - It is not that 5-star movie that Nikhat Kazmi bragged it to be nor the 1-star crap as rated by Taran Adarsh. I found this flawed movie very lovable with only a few things that did not work for me - > Chanda's story from the beginning till her return to Delhi was sluggishly slow and boring, > Some of the songs just didn't fit in - I would have loved some silence in the background where the movie gets time to breath or sink in - Anurag didn't have to use all the 18 songs just because Amit created it for him. >

Despite these, I liked the movie at several levels - esp. Creativity & great scene-level execution. Is this better than No Smoking or Black Friday? - Not as per me. Could Anurag have done it better? - Definitely.

Could this story ever have a 5-star execution - May be not.