This is no small ask when this introverted clerk turns kewl at the drop of a hat, and suddenly becomes the filmiest stud in the world. Granted, the first few minutes of him trying to be all geeky come across as Irrfan Khan doing a bad Amol Palekar impression, but he improves drastically and manages to bestow the character with - if not heart - at least a general likeability. Yet she doesn't love him and - without going into details, really - this apparently necessitates a makeover for SRK. It is the honourable thing to do, he feels as he bumbles around and takes his personals up into the attic, leaving her on a four poster bed with one pillow and all the privacy she can ask for. Shah Rukh the Square marries young Taani. Chopra's economy soon takes us into an inexplicable plot, one where. This all happens in the first few frames of the movie, so one was prepared to appreciate Chopra for breezing through a section that would have formed an entire film plot for, say, Sooraj Barjatya. Alas, the baraat bus has crashed, and the wedding isn't to be. Khan, a wedding guest, fumbles nervously with a straw in his bottle of cola, as things go horribly wrong - something foreshadowed in a very badly recorded voice-over that opens the film and never really comes back. Youngling Anushka Sharma looks earnest enough, an excited bride hurriedly dispensing with SRK, fobbing him off with polite greetings as she runs up to inspect her trousseau. Still, we go in expecting an entertainer, and the film starts off poised to deliver. Well, let's just say too many kukkads spoil the broth. The 'hi-ji,' 'hello-ji' sounds all right, but if everyone lays it on this thick. Shah Rukh and buddy Vinay Pathak may have been able to act well, but are made to say ' yaara' in the middle of every blasted sentence to each other. Just last week we were raving about an excellent depiction of the Punjabi milieu, but naturalism now seems alien to Aditya.
And even the Punjabiana is so darned forced. It's as if every young director is told to look back into the YRF catalog and pick up a hit or three, and 'borrow' song or scene or dialogue or, well, plot.Īnd the young Mr Chopra seems trapped in the past, in the flutter of yellow dupattas and Punjabi fields. People get onto bikes and the Dhoom song plays, Shah Rukh Khan christens himself Raj and uses his Dil Toh Pagal Hai intro as an opener, and while there's nothing wrong with the technique per se, Adi and his directors have flogged it to death.
Yash Raj Films has always indulged in much self-referencing, but now the oh-look-how-we-used-to-make-hits giggle has turned into a smug gloat, and it's become sickening. Because honestly - and I say this as somebody who thinks Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge is the quintessential Bollywood masterwork of the 1990s - we really can't take one more film with a heroine begging her Raj to take her away.
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