Dilwale Review/Box Office Thread 2 - Keep Calm,Watch Dilwale - Page 17

Dilwale

Director: Rohit Shetty

Actors: Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Varun Dhawan

Rating: *1/2

If you strip superstar' Shah Rukh Khan of his inherent wit, wealth and a phenomenally inspirational middle-class story of his own, what you get through his appearances on the big screen is essentially an average Akshay Kumar picture. Which is something that hits theatre once every three months anyway.

What Shah Rukh Khan manages to do instead (something our desi Akshayji may not be English-educated or press savvy enough for) is create such an annual mega-event out of it through generating hype and hope in the mainstream media that you're enticed enough to buy the ticket on the first weekend of the film's release anyway. Picture khatam, paisa hajam. As was the case in my fully packed multiplex this afternoon. It was no different with Chennai Express earlier.

As for the movie itself, the reason it's so shoddy and the storyline so second-rate is because the filmmakers are fully aware that this is what the audiences really want"whether they deserve it or not is altogether another matter.

This is above all a film by "Rohit Shetty and team". Which means there will be the usual setting in Goa (that is probably Ramoji Rao or some other studio), and there's the Shetty Shetty Bang Bang stuff"basically expensive cars and SUVs flying all over the place (overgrown kids probably get off on this sight).

What are we in the theatre for though? For a second I thought, and since I was forewarned, this was going to be some sort of a remake of the 90s cult classic, Hum (1991). Shah Rukh plays Amitabh Bachchan's role, of a former main henchman of a top don who's given up on his past ways, and behaves like a non-violent do-gooder in public. He used to be once in love with the rival's don's daughter (Kajol). They've parted ways too. He lives with his much younger brother. That was Govinda in Hum. It's Varun Dhawan here"the only lead actor best suited to play Govinda in the current generation.

But that's not all there is to this movie. In fact what else is there is even harder to make sense of. Besides locations in Bulgaria that look beautiful. Shah Rukh and Kajol repeatedly play on the fact that they were once the super-hit couple in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), as if we're watching a Bollywood film about another Bollywood film.

Enough fine actors have been added to the cast to make up for the precious little that's actually going on, like Boman Irani as the Goa Mafioso, Varun Sharma as the other Varun's best-friend"he's by the way the same funny guy from the sleeper hit Fukrey (2013). He delivers a dard-bhari monologue on the plight of males, straight out of Pyar Ka Punchnama"another post-campus low-budget pic that became quite big.

Here's what you begin to wonder by the end of it then. What was the point of spending so many crores in making and marketing this movie with a lilting background score, when all I can recall (or at least, is worth recalling) beyond a splitting headache is actor Sanjay Mishra doing the brilliant Jeevan impersonation, and Johnny Lever cracking it with his South Indian mimicry.

Should've made a whole picture with them only no? Well, we will see the point once the bumper box-office numbers of the first weekend come in. Good for the filmmakers. For now, I'm just feeling a little shetty that's all.

(Movie Review- By Mayank Shekhar)