Director: Shakun Batra
Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Rajat Kapoor, Ratna Pathak Shah, Siddharth Malhotra, Fawad Khan, Aalia Bhatt
Run Time: 132 minutes
After a long time, I watched a Hindi film and it turned out to be a film that I can lend my criticism to. First thing first, it reminds me of Death at a Funeral! And it also reminded me of This is where I leave you.
Now I was not expecting Dharma Production to go beyond mediocrity of the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai-s and the Student of the Year-s of the world. but with this one and a few other such ventures, they have tried to redefine their brand or must I say it is the influence of the 20th century fox collaboration.
The movie as a whole was not bad, maybe didn’t really suit the taste of the shallow Indian audience, but it was not the worst of the season.
The movie however was full of scenes curated in cliché manner, induced into what we can call a decent plot. Then there are the Dharma production influence to introduce the audience some ideologies which the film house subscribes to, but it all falls into place. It is not really new, but this old wine in new bottle is refreshing, thanks to some decent performances and good handling and development of characters for the script. Acting is not as much a paralytic constrain in today’s film industry in here as it used to be some years back.
Rishi Kapoor was the best of the lot, Alia Bhatt impressed me with her rendition of the cliché- parents died in the plane crash role given to her. I think her role was initially stretched too far then completely forgotten. The director didn’t spend a lot of time innovating the characters of either Rajat Kapoor or Siddharth Malhotra, they both were as if playing a character they left behind in their last film. While Kapoor can have a claim to acting prowess, this is the limit Malhotra can reach with his capabilities as a performer. Ratna Pathak was good, she has always been good at what she does on screen. The courage of Fawad Khan to take up the role that has a Dharma Ideology stamp took me by surprise. he was not really extraordinary and he didn’t really do much different than what he did in the other movie, Khoobsurat! The peripheral characters were all too cliché and with them around Coonnoor didn’t really seem like it was in South, but more like it is somewhere in Himachal.
And for everything that is coming out of Bollywood, does it really have to Punjabi? Agreed that everyone wants to become as full of life as the Punjabi in their best of dreams, I mean no offense to the state and its rich culture and brilliant people, it is high time that people start showing other states and the associated culture in their renditions. for a change?
Dialogue delivery was a concern, each of the character playing Kapoors had a different style despite being from the same family which was odd. Alia Bhatt didn’t sound Mumbai-kar in her role either. And Siddharth Malhotra doesn’t have another way to speak his lines anyways.
This is at the end of the day a short novel material taken from a good movie from abroad. and lacked depth, more in the essence than the rendition and justifications that the actors try to bring to the table.
Over all, enjoyable watch.