~~~~Hasee toh Phasee Reviews~~~~ - Page 9

By Rahul Desai

Film: Hasee Toh Phasee
Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Parineeti Chopra, Adah Sharma, Manoj Joshi
Direction: Vinil Mathew
Certification: (U/A) Rating: ***
Directed by ad filmmaker Vinil Mathew, this can't have been an easy first film to make. There are a dozen omnipresent pre-wedding characters with their idiosyncrasies; even that rotund Gujarati relative that begins and ends monosyllabic conversations with the inimitably rhetoric 'Baaki?' Simultaneously, boxes of culture-clashing family melodrama have to be ticked, while being scrupulous enough to maintain narrative sequence; something last week's debutant Devika Bhagat failed to accomplish in 'One By Two'.
At some level, the writers have been subconsciously inspired by the Anne Hathaway-starrer 'Rachel Getting Married': a bleak drama about a wayward rehab-returned woman attending her sister's wedding over a weekend.

Parineeti Chopra plays this disdained central character, Meeta, who attempts to return after 7 mysterious years. The only difference is that she is carelessly being hidden from her kinsfolk by her bride-to-be sister Karishma (Adah) and, subsequently, by groom-to-be Nikhil (Malhotra, with eyes so expressive that dialogue is a hindrance). Karishma and Nikhil are in a terminal relationship- the sort where breakups are as common as chance meetings and plot contrivances decorating this genre.

Inevitably, it comes down to how believable these characters are, in an Indian context, irrespective of the improbable situations they find themselves in. This is where the actors' director scores.

Remarkably-cast veterans like Manoj Joshi and Sharat Saxena seem to have been born to play the heads of these atypical families- remnant of the quirky supporting acts in 'Vicky Donor'- families that reinforce cultural stereotypes with deliciously unorthodox takes on retired life.

But it is Chopra that walks away with possibly the most complicated rendition of an afflicted individual; the Black Sheep has seldom been blacker. She was part of a triangle in 'Shuddh Desi Romance', and has also played the banished daughter in 'Ishaqzaade'. Here, she churns out a versatile performance that is part tortured-genius, part endearing-Vodafone-pug and part misplaced-idealism of Raanjhana's Dhanush. When Nikhil reaches out to hug her for the first time during a heart wrenchingly vulnerable moment, it is easy to forget that her motivation to be reunited with her father is less than pure. It is easy to forget that her girl-next-door denim-shorts-look adds more layers to her unstable character than her exaggerated facial expressions early on. Even the chucklesome 'Punjabi Wedding Song' is an appropriate extension of her decidedly-Gujarati persona.

Malhotra couldn't have been more sincere, and together, they pull the script out of a dreary gestation period and questionable surface-level offshoots (their superficial business projects, Adah's dwindled screentime, an ill-fitting CID spinoff.)

According to the late Roger Ebert, no good movie is too long. With a running time of 141 minutes, 'Hasee Toh Phasee' is a bedheady romantic comedy that is a bit long and has two climaxes- both of which could have overlapped, in my opinion. Nevertheless, Parineeti as Meeta is one for the ages; she is the powering force behind a well-mounted film which, for most of its 141 minutes, is a timely shot in the arm for a traditionally mishandled genre.