Prem Ratan Dhan Payo - BO / Reviews - Thread 2

Just saw it. LOVED IT ❤️An emotional movie with some wonderful comedy😳 I am going to try to give the review without spoilers. The story is predictable but the way Sooraj presents it makes it engaging. The screenplay was good...it did drag in parts especially in the second half. Some scenes can easily be chopped off. The comic and emotional scenes score well though. As far as the songs...I strongly believe that all the songs were needed...maybe the length of the songs could have been reduced but they were needed bc the main character works in a drama company (not a spoiler bc prem leela song gave it away😆) and he shows all his emotions via songs. Thus I dont think songs needed to be taken out and each song is situational.

I liked the balance of good vs bad in this movie..too much goodness would have been overwhelming. The sets and picturisation is a treat to the eyes...it literally makes me want to live in those palaces lol😆 Very impressed with direction...especially in Prem and Maithili scenes...you need some sensitive direction to get the romance just right.The background score was okay overall...some parts had overly dramatic music which was not needed at all.

Onto the actors and who else to start with than my teddy bear😳Salman miya tussi great ho. I always love you but now I love you even more. There was whisting and cheering from girls in the theater on Prem Leela😆I was too busy oogling at Salman but I could hear those cheers. You can see Salman is enjoying acting now and it shows. And omg playing playing Prem and Vijay...it literally felt like two different characters to me. 😲😆The body language and dialogues expressed by Salman as the two characters is flawless. I had to remind myself nooo only one Salman😆And on the parts where screenplay was getting slow...it was def Salman's charisma that kept me glued.

Sonam looked beautiful and she looks like a princess. I cant imagine anybody else for Maithali. She acted decently...the first two scenes where she starts talking to Prem could have been better. But as the movie progressed I found her too cute and playing the role of a princesss forgetting that she is a princess and getting naughty really well. Salnam chemistry is the one of the highlights of the film. 😳 you do get goosebumps☺️

Anupam Kher was fabulous and his and Salman scenes were the drive force in the film. Swara Bhaskar...truly an exceptional actress...her and Salman scenes made me really emotional...now I want to see my bros😭..have seen them in so long The little sister was so powerful with her facial expressions...stuck in turmoil over family fights. NNM acting is awesome..his role could have been explored more though. Armaan was strictly okay.

I would definitely wach this movie with your family or as a big group bc you will get emotional and knowing that someone who you love is sitting right next to you will make it an an even more emotional experience😳

The next thing I know my dad is calling his sister in India.😳

An early scene in Rajshri Productions' Prem Ratan Dhan Payo gives us an indicator of the ancient values this film seems keen to propagate. Yuvraaj Vijay Singh is meeting journalists in the run-up to his ascension to the throne of his kingdom. A bemused newsperson asks him about the appropriateness of the ornate coronation ceremony in this modern world. It's almost funny, says the man. "You think traditions are funny?" an affronted Yuvraaj shoots back softly.

His offended tone is genuine. I could almost picture the gentle-voiced, quaintly conservative writer-director Sooraj Barjatya throwing precisely that question in precisely that tone to a critic bemused at the extreme conservatism of his latest film. It would be a genuinely felt question because Sooraj - as I gathered from a long interaction I once had with him - is actually convinced of the purity of the regressive scenarios he portrays in his films.

The director of megahitsMaine Pyar Kiya (MPK), Hum Aapke Hain Koun...! (HAHK),Hum Saath-Saath Hain,Vivah and the not-so-successful Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon returns to the big screen after a 9-year gap with Prem Ratan Dhan Payo.

This Salman Khan-Sonam Kapoor-starrer lacks even those few qualities that made his earlier ventures bearable for folk like me, who find his settings and worldview unbearable. MPK, for instance, had sweet songs and a Salman whose youthful innocence somewhat compensated for his acting inadequacies. HAHKhad Madhuri Dixit's electric pizzazz, peppy numbers and the novelty value of 14 songs in a single film even for an India bred on musicals. Vivah had emotional heft - I guiltily confess that I sobbed through it, despite being conscious of how conformist, maudlin and melodramatic it was.

Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (PRDP) has none of the above. The story is dull. The songs - usually considered a Rajshri USP - are an utter bore. Twenty-six years after he made his debut as a hero with Sooraj's directorial debut MPK, Salman's shot at a double role in PRDP merely highlights his limitations. That trademark charming goofiness fails him here; he seems to be trying too hard.

Playing his fianc, Sonam Kapoor is as stunning and stylish as ever but it's hard to look beyond the fact that she looks young enough to be Salman's daughter. Coming as she is from the box-office success of Khoobsurat in 2014, at a stage when Hindi filmdom is offering marginally less limiting roles to its heroines, it is just as hard not to wonder why she saw this baap-beti romance as a positive stamp on her CV. The talented Deepak Dobriyal and Swara Bhaskar too, are sinfully wasted here. The only one who comes off looking good is Neil Nitin Mukesh, an under-rated actor who really really deserves better than this film.

In short, PRDP is insufferable.

The lacklustre story is set in Pritampur, where Rajkumari Maithili (Sonam) is set to join her fianc, the Yuvraaj (Salman), for his crowning. Before her arrival, an accident brings into the royal fold a doppelganger, Prem Dilwaale (also Salman), and his sidekick Kanhaiya (Deepak Dobriyal). Prem is a small-time actor and Ram bhakt from Ayodhya. Also in the picture are a loyal Diwan (Anupam Kher), the prince's estranged half sisters Chandrika (Swara) and Radhika, his half brother Ajay (Neil) and Ajay's sneaky lieutenant Chirag Singh (Armaan Kohli).

That the story and storytelling style are tedious is not PRDP's only problem. That the setting is feudal and patriarchal is not the problem either. The problem is that the director glorifies and romanticises every feudal, patriarchal, backward practice portrayed in this yawn-inducing film.

Take for instance a flashback during which Diwansaab explains the tension between the Yuvraaj and his sundry siblings. Apparently the dead Maharaj (Sameer Dharmadhikari) had a wandering eye. An affair (or was it an nth marriage?) with a singer resulted in two daughters. In their childhood, the many fruit of the king's loins all sang, danced and played together in pretty clothes in a Sheesh Mahal above a waterfall, in the way humungous joint families have all sung, danced and played together in every Sooraj Barjatya film so far. The king's philandering is passed off casually by the man himself as his "kamzori (weakness)". The ensuing rifts, on the other hand, are blamed on auraton ke jhagde (women's fights). How dare these stupid royal chicks expect monogamy or fidelity from their spouses, no?

To ensure that no one in the audience is left with any doubt about a woman's place in the world, the Rajkumari says at one point in response to Vijay/Prem's request for her cooperation in one of his schemes: Jaise Ram chahenge, Sita karegi (Sita will do what Ram wills). It is no coincidence that she is called Maithili, one of the many names of the Goddess Sita who is considered by some to be the epitome of unquestioning wifely obedience in the Hindu pantheon.

Elsewhere, the writer makes what I suspect is an effort to prove his progressiveness by giving us an extended sequence involving a horny Maithili begging Vijay/Prem to do the deed with her. That situation could have led to a discussion on the complex issue of consent, since at that point Maithili thinks she is dealing with Vijay and does not know of Prem's existence. But to attribute such layered feminist writing to PRDP would be to give more credit than is due to a film that thinks women would naturally be lousy at football, that men would be naturally good at it (sports ke maamle mein ladies logon ko kuch kuch hota hai, you see!) and thinks it is being ultra-cool by including one feisty female football player in the story.

Frankly, spending so much time writing such a long review is in itself giving more credit than is due to this half-baked, lifeless, low-IQ film with its juvenile humour and family politics that resembles circumstances in the cheapest saas-bahu soaps now running on Hindi fiction TV.

There is a scene in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, where at it's most romantic moment Rajkumari Maithili (Sonam Kapoor) gives Prem Dilwala (Salman Khan) a huge, white feather pen and asks him to write on her back. She goes on to shut all the doors of the large palatial kitchen, signaling her surrender to Prem. As she expresses her love with a Himesh Reshammiya composed song, Prem looks touched, shy, loving and reluctant all at once.

It's the classic Barjatya romance, full of the nineties' sensuality and moral, virginal men and women. The kitchen or a terrace is the romantic playground.

In 1994, it was no different. Khan was the same, shy and gentlemanly Prem, who was served a loving meal, late at night by Nisha (Madhuri Dixit). Soon they danced to a sensual SP Balasubramaniam number, "Pehla pehla pyaar hai".

It all started for both Barjatya and Salman Khan in 1989,when they made their debut with Maine Pyaar Kiya. Khan was a younger Prem who gracefully covered Suman (Bhagyashree) when she unrobed herself for him. Once again, SP's bass-heavy voice in "mere rangon mein.."brought out the beautiful, sensual mood of the sequence.

Back to 2015, Barjatya's sense of romance is still the same: virginal, old world and musical. The hero's name is the same: Prem. The sentiment is the same: pure love. The values are the same: strong sense of family duty.

The PRDP world is almost the same: rich, big families, but with a difference. They are not the deeply loving joint families of Hum Aapke Hain Kaun or Hum Saath Saath Hain. This Rajshri world has a family full of discord. There are half brothers and half sisters, one father with three wives. They are not just rich. They are royal kings and queens who live in palaces.

This sheesh mahal has a bhool bhulaiya zone full of Mughale e Azam like mirrors and huge chandeliers which are used to display an element most uncharacteristic of a Barjatya film: Violence. Little wonder, that it is the most unconvincing part of the film.

What comes before and after the fight sequences, is the most predictable of plots yet the most appealing part. It works because of what Barjatyas are really good at: massive and blatant emotional appeal.

The film starts with the introduction of this universe. There is a prince called Vijay Singh (Salman Khan, in a small double role). He is betrothed to princess Maithili. Vijay has a half brother, Ajay Singh (Neil Nitin Mukesh) who resents Vijay's authority as the eldest. Vijay has two half sisters (Swara Bhaskar and Aashika Bhatia) who resent his rightful heritage denied to them because their own mother was not their common father's queen. There is a secret plot to kill Vijay. In the midst of the story of the prince and princess comes a pauper and a look alike of Vijay Singh"Prem Dilwala.

In some rather contrived ways, Prem ends up resolving family issues while entertaining with too many songs. There's also a football sequence along the way (remember cricket in HAHK?) while a small moustache also plays a significant, romantic role. The screenplay stretches for a good 170 minutes and goes into lengthy brother- sister tearful sagas . A dialogue is thrown in to coincide with the festive time of the film's release. It goes, "rishta behnon ka hai lekin naam to hai, bhaidooj."

The acts are well pulled of by Khan with his usual playful balancing; Mukesh charms with his sizzling screen presence and Bhaskar is entertaining in her heartwarming portrayal. Sonam Kapoor is sweet and adequate as the innocent princess but has little to do. The Indian regal costumes in cold pastels, don't do her slim frame, much justice. She and Khan make an interesting and pleasant pair, even at their subdued best"feathers et al.

Not surprisingly, this Barjatya film is as nice, predictable, old fashioned and sweet as a Diwali laddoo. Full of emotionally engaging, PG-rated Prem leela.