I had read a lot of negative reviews of RNBDJ, so when I entered the cinema hall yesterday my expectations were low. And I was pleasantly surprised.
Story :-
RNBDJ is the story of Surinder Sahni (SRK), a middle aged government employee living in Amritsar, a simple, down to earth guy who has no high ambitions in life and is quite content with his ordinary existence. In other words, the typical common man. But suddenly his life changes when due to circumstances he gets married to Tanni (Anoushka). Tanni is the exact opposite of Suri. She is vivacious, outgoing and full of life. But the circumstances which make her marry Suri have left her disappointed with life and love. Tanni promises Suri that we will be a good wife to him but also warns him that she will never be able to love him. Suri who has fallen madly in love with Tanni hopes that time will change her feeling towards him.
One day a dance competition is organised in Amritsar which Tanni wants to participate in. Suri encourages Tanni to join the dance classes thinking that this will make her happy. At the same time he also realizes that she finds him as attractive as a piece of furniture. Suri turns to his best friend Bobby (Vinay Pathak) to give him a makeover which will make his attractive to Tanni. Bobby styles him into a ‘cool dude’ and Suri goes to Tanni’s dance class to surprise her. But Tanni does not recognize him and through a twist of fate he is assigned to be her dance partner. This gives him the idea to befriend her as ‘Raj’ thinking that he will tell her the truth when she becomes friendly and comfortable with him. They become friends but over the course of time he realizes that as Tanni is getting close to Raj, she is drifting away from Suri…….
Impact :-
The movie starts very promisingly. Suri is such a lovable character that the audience starts feeling for him within the first five minutes. The early interactions of Suri and Tanni are sweet and engaging. I feared that once Suri turns into Raj, the movie will go downhill. But Raj lighted up the screen with his crude energy. The interactions between Raj and Tanni kept a smile on my face throughout. The songs did not sound so good on hearing but the way they have been choreographed and placed in the movie, makes then endearing. The dialogues are also very good.
But the movie feels much stretched. It needs to be trimmed by at least 20-25 minutes. Some of the scenes were quite unnecessary like the whole Rakhi sequence. Also the song with different heroines, though entertaining, was not needed at all. But the heartwarming climax made up for the lapses. The snapshots shown with the end titles with Suri’s voiceover ensured that I walked out of the hall with a smile on my face.
I usually try not to reveal much of the story or scenes of the movie in my reviews but I want to mention one scene which I really liked. Towards the end of the movie when Suri and Tanni visit the Golden Temple, Tanni touches Suri’s feet. In any other movie, a wife touching her husband’s feet would have made me angry. But here it brought tears to my eyes. Tanni touched Suri’s feet because she realized that he was a superior human being, capable of unconditional love which she was not. I am thankful to Aditya Chopra for not giving that scene any dialogues.
Performances :-
RNBDJ would have fallen flat on its face without SRK. He carried the entire movie on his shoulders. Most people liked him as Suri but disliked as Raj. But I feel that portraying Raj actually showed his true acting poweress. SRK’s earlier Raj/Rahuls were all cool dudes – confident and sauve. RNBDN’s Raj is not a dude – he is a wannabe dude. He is loud because he is not confident. He wears funky clothes but his body language shows that he is uncomfortable. He comes across as cheap and irritating because he is trying too hard to be somebody he is not. As Raj, SRK goes over the top but stops just short of hamming and that’s where SRK the actor scores. Inspite of the flashy clothes I did not forget even once that this is Suri in disguise. I an unable to think of any other actor in today’s scenario who could have carried both these roles with such panache.
Anoushka gave a very good performance, danced well and looked pretty. But she could not make me feel for her. She lacks the spark that makes an actor a star. I may be wrong. Lets see….
Vinay Pathak is brilliant. He is completely adorable as Suri dedicated best friend. In fact SRK’s chemistry with Vinay Pathak is much better than his chemistry with Anoushka.
My final take :-
It could have been a much better movie than it is. A lot of things are done under the guise of cinematic liberty. Chopra relied too much on SRK to carry the movie. That SRK was able to do it does not excuse Chopra from average writing and bad editing. All said and done, RNBDJ is a sweet, feel good movie which made me smile, and cry, and again smile.
3.5/5