Dil Dhadakne Do Reviews and Box Office thread! - Page 37

A round-trip luxury cruise is a perfect metaphor for Zoya Akhtar's Dil Dhadakne Do: it's glossy, it's picturesque, everything on board costs far more than it ought, there are some pretty people, a few of whom make a scene, a family shakes a leg quite memorably, there is some motion sickness and " for something that ends up precisely and predictably where it started " it takes a helluva long time going nowhere.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing. We need great movies and trashy movies and insightful movies and clever movies, sure, but sometimes we duck into a darkened theatre looking for comfort food, and that's when we need movies that do just what they promise on the label.

Modest ambitions notwithstanding, Dil Dhadakne Do takes a while to hit its stride, starting off choppy and feeling " at least for the first ninety of its indulgent 170 minutes " like a weak sitcom. Society types sniping at one another while the background score functions like a laugh track? Ouch. It's like a really long episode of Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai where Satish Shah doesn't show up. And it doesn't help that in DDD, the narrator is a dog. The Mehra family, the frustrated foursome at the heart of this film, have a fifth member, an adorable bullmastiff who happens to be narrating the film. (Not kidding). And he's voiced by Aamir Khan. (I wish I were kidding.)

Thus does Aamir's Pluto Mehra pontificate on about people and their peculiar ways, but this too-literal voiceover " full of homilies about how strange humans are " is shockingly reminiscent of Khan's last film, PK, where he played an alien, full of homilies about how strange humans are. The gimmick could conceivably have been cute, but the film embraces it as an afterthought: it's fundamentally messed up that Pluto has nothing to do in the entire movie except talk reproachfully about people; and secondly that Khan, delivering platitudes written by Javed Akhtar, does so with a disturbingly pompous all-knowing voice. Snapdeal-Dhadakne-Do, the dog appears to be saying.

The project is lifted by a couple of actors, Anil Kapoor and Ranveer Singh playing the Mehra father and son and injecting Dil Dhadakne Do with energy and repose respectively. The film is about a family on a cruise with their friends, a nearly-bankrupt family taking a last-gasp holiday because saving face is too important, and it is Kapoor's undying ebullience and Singh's perplexed inwardness that defines the film and sets it on course. Zoya Akhtar's film doesn't provide much insight and leans too heavily on repetitive, sitcom-like reaction shots to underline its own obvious points over and over again " this is a film that generalises too much, one where all the parents are regressive, all the women are marriage-bait " but in the cacophony of these belaboured caricatures, Singh provides tremendous calm and brings nuance to the table. He's excellent. It's as if an understated actor from a Pakistani TV show walked out into a deafening Balaji crowd.

To be fair, however, the crowd is mostly on point. Farhan Akhtar, who has done a spiffy job with the film's often sardonic dialogue, is rather charming in the film. Shefali Shah is reliably strong as an unhappy, delusional wife, though she does appear to be channeling Shabana Azmi too much, and intriguing new actress Ridhima Sud is memorably cool as a young girl who knows when her shotglass needs another splash. The striking Priyanka Chopra can carry of a yellow sun hat with immense flair, but her Beyonc-level swagger (and her auditioning-for-America accent that randomly makes some English lines jar) is at odds with her character's innate mousiness in front of her parents. Anushka Sharma, playing a dancer but assuredly more comfortable on stage here than during her last debacle, is pretty great here as she concocts heady chemistry with Singh, the two infectiously grinning at each other as they fool around.

Sharma and Singh are smashing together, starting off their courtship hurriedly, with the kind of conversation people used to have on the Internet back in the day " throwing factual stats about their life out onto the table as if playing verbal Uno " but rather than seeming unnatural, it works because they make it seem believable that these two characters urgently want to get really close really fast. Sharma, more world-weary, is at times hesitant, and Singh " playing a leading man, who, refreshingly enough, has achieved nothing and knows nothing about where he's headed " approaches the romance bullishly, in that reckless way we do when we finally know what we want. There's a fine, fine moment where he pins her down and declares his love to her theatrically, in blustery, Bollywood-y dialogue, and she yanks him down for a kiss " tenderly, yes, but also simply to shut the fool up.

There is much, thus, that is wrong with Dil Dhadakne Do " the way it treats chauvinism as an absolute aspect of personality, the awful Priyanka Chopra plotline, the total lack of progressive parental figures on board the ship (where is that Daadi from Queen when you really need her?) " but it has a few sharp character-driven moments and, unlike most Hindi films, it ends stronger than it started, an impressive feat considering it always intended to finish things off in obviously feel-good fashion.

Despite its flaws, I find myself looking back at Dil Dhadakne Do and smiling. Because of Kapoor, a man who is unerringly good when given enough elbow room, and here he's silvermaned and smooth and selfish and playing his part with superb gusto. His character is so self-obsessed that in his head he's frequently confounded by just how obvious things seem to him and not the rest of the world, and Kapoor is superb as he restlessly swells up while waiting for everyone else to catch up to him. And because of Singh, who owns his moments of frustration, of resignation, of outrage, of wry comebacks. There is a scene where he loses all his calm and throws out the facts threateningly, like a grenade bobbed at his family, that he's in love with a girl. "She's a dancer and a muslim," he says, daring them to react, and Singh is scarily good. But he's even better when wordlessly standing on the deck, helplessly looking at his own shoes instead of daring to embrace his sobbing sister.

Dil Dhadakne Do translates to let the heart beat. The heart, it wants what it wants, and that's all very well, especially if it wants the kind of watery climaxes where hugs solve everything. But ah, how I wish this film hadn't gone doggystyle.

Rating: 3 stars

http://rajasen.com/2015/06/05/review-zoya-akhtars-dil-dhadakne-do/

Dil Dhadkne du

Dil Dhadakne Do -A smashing cruise into the lives of a smashed-up elitist family Dil Dhadakne Do again proves Zoya Akthar to be the master of dysfunctional selfserving relationships

Movie Review: Mid-ocean , Anushka Sharma, playing an on-cruise dancer named , hold your breath Farah, decides to take a dip in the pool. As Ranveer Singh, the spoilt aimless rich brat(like Hrithik in Lakshya) watches her with famished eyes , one is reminded of Rishi Kapoor's eyes making love to the water nymph Dimple Kapadia in Ramesh Saagar.

That was another era, another aura. The vibes in Zoya Akhtar's third feature film are distinctly here-now-and-matter-of-fact. A very
charismatic gallery of actors slip into their roles with the fluent ease of swimmers who have been in the ocean so many times, they know
exactly when the sharks are awake.

Dil Dhadakne Do is a film about trying to follow the unpredictable rhythms of the song of life . Dil Dhadakne Do is a very elitist film. Oh, yes! The problems faced by the rich going on bankrupt, Mehra family are peculiar to the privileged classes. In fact in one of the film's funniest scenes"and there are countless of those, let me assure you"Priyanka's hypochondriac mother-in-law(Zarina Wahab) asks the younger woman what the problem is after her Bahu says she wants to leave her husband because she is not happy in the marriage.

"Problem kya hai?!" the bewildered mother-in-law asks.And she may well have a point. Priyanka's husband Maanav (Rahul Bose, giving
cogency to a thankless role) doesn't beat her up, "allows" her to work, and lets her be.

And still, unhappy?? Ha ha ha.

The dialogues by Farhan Akhtar(who enters at intermission-point in a pitch-perfect heroic avatar) are savagely wise and profoundly
unforgiving of the characters' self-centred cloistered world of wealth and extravagance and spiritual nullity. When Farhan's character
of the world-weary journalist lectures Priyanka's husband on gender discrimination, you listen because the guy makes sense and he makes
sense because he's played by Farhan Akhtar.

Barring Priyanka Chopra who tends to ham in the dramatic scenes, every actor shines, some brighter than others. Anil Kapoor as the
Mehra patriarch- ridiculing his wife for her food habits, treating his brother as a hired staff, pushing his daughter into a loveless marriage , pushing her lover away to America, and slotting his son as a reluctant heir apparent"spins the kind of performance that is tragic turbulent anxious and funny.

But it's Shefali Shah as his trophy atrophied wife who nails her part the best . She brings to her character an unfussy pitch-perfection rarely seen in mainstream cinema. Shefali provides the most heartbreaking moment to the irascible plot when towards the end she sits crumbled on the master bedroom and tells her husband, You forgot me' .

This moment comes right after the Great Confrontation , brilliantly written and performed, in a hospital room where the Mehras' heir-apparent accuses his parents of living in a sham marriage. Watch how Ranveer Singh and Anil Kapoor play against one another without
trying to be one up.The two actors are a treat to watch.

Ranveer Singh comes into his own with ths film displaying the ability to get into character without bringing in the unnecessary baggage of
his nervous energy. Priyanka Chopra in the crucial role of the Mehras' unhappily married daughter looks more like a character from Ekta
Kapoor's saas-bahu serial.She sticks out like a sore thumb in a cast where every actor dives into the ocean with a swimmer's fluent grace,
even debutant Ridhima Sud who along with tv actor Vikrant Massey does a tongue-in-cheek Titanic on Zoya's angst-no-thanks cruise. Anushka Sharma has little to do.And she does it effectively.

The real star of the film is Carlos Catalan's cinematography . This guy is a magician behind the lenses. Some of the most scenic spots in
the Mediterranean are captured as a striking but supplementary backdrop to the storyline. The stunning locales never look touristic.

Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar's writing penetrates to the heart of the patriarchal system. The writing rips the veneer of sophistication off
these wealthy characters, shows them stripped to the soul and yet, miraculously Zoya's film never ridicules them. She loves her
characters. But she isn't blind to their fatal flaws, nor forgiving of them.

Her use of sound"or rather the lack of it"is largely unheard of in modern mainstream cinema. Where other filmmakers would have punctuated and hammered in the drama of the dysfunctional family with pounding background music, Zoya refrains and abstains. She strips the soundtrack of noise, reveling in the shrieking silences of souls tormented by such existential dilemmas as...what to wear for the party in the evening, how to sneak into a lover's room without getting caught, how to tell that aunty on stage that her singing is an
embarrassment.

Oof, life! Did Zoya say the last time Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara? She proves herself wrong by giving her creativity one more chance to
blossom , this time mid-ocean with characters who would have been utterly tragic were they not so funny. Here in one corner of the
universe she takes us on a smashing cruise into the lives of a smashed-up elitist family.

Zoya Akhtar once again proves herself the master of dysfunctional self-serving relationships. With a welter of witty words and a profusion of pungent situations(barring a contrived climax) the narrative glides across a shipload of shipwrecked characters played by actors who can peer into their restless characters and see how ridiculous they are beneath their posh exteriors.

Dil Dhadakne Do is a film that could have been noisy messy and crowded. It ends up being just the opposite .

As Aamir Khan would say for the Mehras' canine Pluto, "Bow wow!"

Yup, we bow to the wow.

PS. Piku, Tanu Weds Manu Returns and Now Dil Dhadakne Do...gosh, it's raining wunderfilms in Bollywood!

----------Subhash k Jha