Aishwarya Rai and Puru Raj Kumar have been completely miscast. Aishwarya 's emotional scenes are a pain to watch. The actress lacks the acting prowess to carry off the role of a tawaif and falls flat in comparison with her predecessors like Vyjayanthimala, Meena Kumari, Rekha, or Madhuri Dixit. JP Dutta should have realized that good looks can never substitute good performance. Aishwarya looks very beautiful but she does not look the part of a Muslim woman or a tawaif at all! Even her Urdu is terrible at times.
Abhishek Bachchan, Divya Dutta and Ayesha Jhulka are wasted. One wonders why a top actor like Abhishek would sign such a film at this stage of his career. Roles like these are best left for character actors like Milind Gunaj or Parmeet Sethi.
The slow pace of the film, uninspiring performances, and bad word of mouth publicity will cause this film to fare miserably at the box office. Instead of ever watching Aishwarya’s Umrao Jaan, I would highly recommend watching Rekha’s Umrao Jaan again and again!