Dholakia knows his Gujarat . That was clear in his ‘Parzania ‘. There are some flashes of that insider knowledge here too, but you can see how fear of being censored has blunted the edges of this film which could have really lifted off the screen. The riots, both in Mumbai and Gujarat, have a seriously anodyne feel. And the predictable arc of the story weighs the second half down.
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SRK’s romantic interest, Mahira Khan, too is not as fresh as she could have been: the coyness is old Bollywood and in a film which should have embraced its masala roots much more firmly, it just sinks. So does item girl Sunny Leone, who shakes it, shakes it, but raises zero steam.
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A still from Sunny Leone’s item number Laila main laila.
So this is what we get: a Nawaz who is having the time of his life, and making us crack multiple grins, up against an SRK who breaks through in some moments ( especially one in which he shares with his bete noire, when the film shuts everything else down so that we can focus on the duo ) but gets bogged down in florid, seen-too-many-times flourishes in the rest. That brief exchange makes us sigh for what might have been, and I will take it away. There’s some zest in the beginning when we see a winning bunch of boys — the young Raees and his bestie, played by Zeeshan Ayyub — learn the ropes of their ‘ganda dhanda’, but soon enough adulthood is upon them, and so is the slide.
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A song in the film reminds us that SRK who plays Raees is a ‘single piece ‘ in this ‘akkhi duniya’ ( entire world) : it is meant for the character, but we know it is for the star.
Yes he is. But maybe we’ll be more aware of it the next time around, when he is not so wrapped in slo-mo advances, and lack-lustre song-and-dances.