WHATS YOUR RASHEE-Reviews

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With Jodhaa Akbar and the Academy Award-nominated Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India under his belt, Ashutosh Gowariker is justly celebrated for his lush period epics. Even his contemporary film Swades: We, the People had a soaring, serious dramatic bent. Who knew he'd been waiting for the right moment to leap into romantic comedy?

And who knew he'd do it so beautifully? Light, sparkling and sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious, What's Your Raashee? stars Harman Baweja and the stellar Priyanka Chopra in a colourful confection of a love story. Baweja is Yogesh Patel, a young man whose romantic ideals jut up against reality when he's forced to find a bride in twelve days or risk causing his family's downfall. Putting a plan in place, he decides on twelve dates with twelve women. Each woman will be born under a different astrological sign, or raashee. That's the clever conceit of the plot, drawn from Madhu Rye's novel Kimball Ravenswood. Gowariker's own brilliant conceit is to cast Chopra as each of the twelve women.

Having starred in a wide range of popular hits – including two of India's biggest action films – this former Miss World possesses a physical intelligence onscreen that is a marvel to watch. With each character, she adopts not just a different look but a different way of inhabiting her body: the awkward geek girl hunched over her beverage; the severe career woman who submits Yogesh to a clinical inspection; or the traditionallooking shy girl who's secretly more adventurous than she appears. Chopra even plays both a college-aged gum snapper and a high-school ingenue equally convincingly.

Clearly having a ball with the different characters, styles and costumes, Chopra throws herself into the roles, with Baweja ably playing her comic foil. And Gowariker, an admitted fan of both Hollywood's Roman Holiday and classic Bollywood comedy Chupke Chupke, hits all the right notes of fun, glamour and hot romance on the way to the satisfying conclusion.