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First things first - Shahid Kapur IS a very good actor, he is a great looking guy, he is hot, handsome and cute - all in one (if only he'd been a few inches taller) nevertheless, I LOVE him, I can watch even the crappiest of movies just for him (by that I don't mean DBH is crappy) ,just to catch a glimpse of that innocent boyish charm which he retains even after so many years and enjoy that genuine n grounded feel which he brings to all his characters, even the most cliched Foreign Born Confused Desi lover boy ones *sigh*. So, if anyone goes to the movie only to watch Shahid (like me), they will not be disappointed that much. š
Keeping in mind the track record and the quality of YRF movies in the recent times, I went to this movie without high expectations, I basically wanted to see how would DBH look when judged on par with She's The Man, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. Although I appreciate the director for not ripping off the hollywood movie entirely and only drawing inspiration from it in places (STM was based on Shakespeare's The Twelfth Night; DBH's director chose to shun the Shakespeare connection by not penning a twin brother's character for the protagonist Veera), I found that he lost the plot of the movie midway a lot of times.He was trying to maintain a feel good factor, a light-heartedness to it and also send out a social message about respecting women n encouraging them (especially in the field of sports), focusing on the done to death NRI -finds- the -connection- with-his- roots-realizing "I might be away from India but India cannot be away from me" story, concentrating on rebuilding the broken relationships, making the vilayati munda fall for the hard core desi kudi etc., its not easy to touch upon everything by doing justice to all of them, juggling and interweaving these tracks skilfully, and so the director digresses n falters quite a bit which we can see clearly. If the director could have avoided a few of these tracks the movie would have been better.
The story is nothing new for those who have watched She's The Man already but the movie could have had an edge with a novel treatment to the story n a different presentation but sadly not much effort goes into that direction. For his presentation, the director chooses to make a mish-mash of Chak De, DDLJ (Shahid/Rohan's intro, his coaching style are very reminiscent of DLLJ n Chak De resp., drawing a heavy inspiration from the latter especially ), by making constant references to popular Hindi movies and by having scenes like the Hero apologizing to the heroine by repeating famous dialogues from DDLJ,HAHK etc . , which slots this movie into the not so elite Just Another Bollywood Flick category or to be precise, the Just Another YRF Movie one. Despite losing the main plot, which seems to have to do with the lead Veera achieving her dream to play cricket matches with the guys n prove to the world (or at least her gaaon) that she is as good as any male cricketer or perhaps better than some of them, the pace of the movie has not disappointed me, there were times when I wondered why they are digressing from the main story but I never felt bored because of that. However, the climax was something which I found too unrealistic, even by the bolly movie standards, picture this - India's score reads 49/9 in 10 overs and the target is 215, so India needs 166 runs to win in 60 balls when in comes the star of the team, Veera/Veer who immediately sets out on the mission of constantly sending the ball out of the pavilion along with the captain cum lover on the other end of the pitch, so much so that her injury also doesn't seem to come in the way as India manages to win somehow (as if by the movie rule) at the end of it all. I mean I can understand that having nail biting matches in the climax of most of the movies (whether its B'wood or H'wood) is to up the entertainment factor but THIS unrealistic? When they were careful enough to give attention to details of the game to the extent of ensuring that the actors got their body language, positions in the crease n holding the bat right while facing the ball, having Shahid Kapur imitate Shoaib Akhtar's body language while bowling in one scene, getting the fielders' reflexes right while taking the diving catches etc, I expected to see a sufficiently realistic final cricket match in the climax but all we see is the Captain wavering when he realizes in the middle of the match that Veer is none other than Veera n feels betrayed, letting his personal problems affect the team's performance conveniently apart from the impossible victory I mentioned earlier- whatever happened to that sportsman within him who would not let his personal problems get in the way of his game? DBH is full of cliches like Pak captain ridiculing the Indian team, "sexy" Sonia (Rohan's dad's friend's daughter who has hots for him) dismissing an important ritual as "an excuse for the old fashioned illiterate women to glorify their husbands"only to stand corrected by Veera who wins brownie points from Rohan for that etc., to refer to a few.Also there were too many characters lingering about, they were no better than the cut outs used in the back ground in the dramas enacted by the team of the drama company which Veera works for. I personally felt that Rohan's character had more scope than what was shown n that Shahid was under utilized as an actor, however, he excels in whatever he does in the movie but after watching a Kaminey, although these two roles are completely different, one cannot help but feel that its time Shahid grew above these confused/hurt loverboy roles and experimented with off beat roles, which would display his true prowess as an actor . Coming to Rani, her role as the fiery,zesty, "English Janaaoing" Punjabi Kudi Veera is nothing new from the buzzing, bubbly b'wood babes who have become a fad after JWM's Geet and it seemed to me that RM was trying to hard to fit into the role of a vivacious girl, somehow her acting looked very forced or may be it is because the director never explored Veera's liveliness n brought forth her infectious spirit as much as he should have. However, she more than makes up for it in her Man avatar- she was brilliant, spontaneous, funny and quite convincing with a great comic timing as Veer (Veera in a man's garb i.e. the male version of Veera)- I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed watching Veer in action, a special mention to the make up men who did a very good job of making her look like a guy and it is this man portrayal of Rani's which happens to be one of the few highlights of DBH along with the witty, kinda catchy dialogues n wisecracks which are plenty in the movie, you cannot help but wish there were more of Veer, I was not satisfied with whatever was shown of the male version of Rani's character. I also wished there had been a Veera-Sonia angle to the story with the latter falling for the former in her man avatar, like the Viola-Olivia one in the original, in which Olivia falls for Sebastian not knowing that it is actually his twin sister Viola trying to pass herself off as a guy.Rani-Shahid don't really have much chemistry as Veera-Rohan, although Shahid did his part of the job well, I felt Rani spoilt it all by overacting a bit , with her antics which are so wannabe and hence did not pay off. I was not impressed with the way Veera n Rohan's love story was handled either, for the starters I did not see the affection for Rohan in Veer's eyes when (s)he keeps getting hints from the former about him falling for Veera but as a girl she is shown to be willingly reciprocating to his feelings. I was not really satiated with the way they fell for each other although the bonding was there. However, they just ROCKED as Veer-Rohan , I was totally entertained in each n every scene between the Male Version of Rani's character & Rohan - the casual guy rapport despite the other being a gal was shown well.
So finally, these are the things that I liked about the movie-
1.Shahid
2.Veer, i.e., male version of Rani's character
3. Veer-Rohan scenes
4.The witty exchanges between Rohan-Veera in their first meet (the buffalo scene)
5.Humor
6.The hindi-fied English in which Rohan n Veera converse with each other
7.Disco waale khisko n Bangla Bistar Beer Bater songs (Rani was superb as the guy in this one, she got the guy body language and the manly steps right n looked very natural)
8. Father-Son scenes
My Verdict is DBH a decent, time-pass pop corn flick with a few laughs PLUS there is Shahid Kapoor. DBH is not for audiences who don't prefer run of the mill bolly movies. Its not a must-watch but it will not make one pull their hair out or give one headache either.
On a scale of 5, I think I would give it a 2.75 because the movie works in some areas.
EDIT:
Feel free to share what you felt about the movie if you watched it and what you think about my review š
Keeping in mind the track record and the quality of YRF movies in the recent times, I went to this movie without high expectations, I basically wanted to see how would DBH look when judged on par with She's The Man, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. Although I appreciate the director for not ripping off the hollywood movie entirely and only drawing inspiration from it in places (STM was based on Shakespeare's The Twelfth Night; DBH's director chose to shun the Shakespeare connection by not penning a twin brother's character for the protagonist Veera), I found that he lost the plot of the movie midway a lot of times.He was trying to maintain a feel good factor, a light-heartedness to it and also send out a social message about respecting women n encouraging them (especially in the field of sports), focusing on the done to death NRI -finds- the -connection- with-his- roots-realizing "I might be away from India but India cannot be away from me" story, concentrating on rebuilding the broken relationships, making the vilayati munda fall for the hard core desi kudi etc., its not easy to touch upon everything by doing justice to all of them, juggling and interweaving these tracks skilfully, and so the director digresses n falters quite a bit which we can see clearly. If the director could have avoided a few of these tracks the movie would have been better.
The story is nothing new for those who have watched She's The Man already but the movie could have had an edge with a novel treatment to the story n a different presentation but sadly not much effort goes into that direction. For his presentation, the director chooses to make a mish-mash of Chak De, DDLJ (Shahid/Rohan's intro, his coaching style are very reminiscent of DLLJ n Chak De resp., drawing a heavy inspiration from the latter especially ), by making constant references to popular Hindi movies and by having scenes like the Hero apologizing to the heroine by repeating famous dialogues from DDLJ,HAHK etc . , which slots this movie into the not so elite Just Another Bollywood Flick category or to be precise, the Just Another YRF Movie one. Despite losing the main plot, which seems to have to do with the lead Veera achieving her dream to play cricket matches with the guys n prove to the world (or at least her gaaon) that she is as good as any male cricketer or perhaps better than some of them, the pace of the movie has not disappointed me, there were times when I wondered why they are digressing from the main story but I never felt bored because of that. However, the climax was something which I found too unrealistic, even by the bolly movie standards, picture this - India's score reads 49/9 in 10 overs and the target is 215, so India needs 166 runs to win in 60 balls when in comes the star of the team, Veera/Veer who immediately sets out on the mission of constantly sending the ball out of the pavilion along with the captain cum lover on the other end of the pitch, so much so that her injury also doesn't seem to come in the way as India manages to win somehow (as if by the movie rule) at the end of it all. I mean I can understand that having nail biting matches in the climax of most of the movies (whether its B'wood or H'wood) is to up the entertainment factor but THIS unrealistic? When they were careful enough to give attention to details of the game to the extent of ensuring that the actors got their body language, positions in the crease n holding the bat right while facing the ball, having Shahid Kapur imitate Shoaib Akhtar's body language while bowling in one scene, getting the fielders' reflexes right while taking the diving catches etc, I expected to see a sufficiently realistic final cricket match in the climax but all we see is the Captain wavering when he realizes in the middle of the match that Veer is none other than Veera n feels betrayed, letting his personal problems affect the team's performance conveniently apart from the impossible victory I mentioned earlier- whatever happened to that sportsman within him who would not let his personal problems get in the way of his game? DBH is full of cliches like Pak captain ridiculing the Indian team, "sexy" Sonia (Rohan's dad's friend's daughter who has hots for him) dismissing an important ritual as "an excuse for the old fashioned illiterate women to glorify their husbands"only to stand corrected by Veera who wins brownie points from Rohan for that etc., to refer to a few.Also there were too many characters lingering about, they were no better than the cut outs used in the back ground in the dramas enacted by the team of the drama company which Veera works for. I personally felt that Rohan's character had more scope than what was shown n that Shahid was under utilized as an actor, however, he excels in whatever he does in the movie but after watching a Kaminey, although these two roles are completely different, one cannot help but feel that its time Shahid grew above these confused/hurt loverboy roles and experimented with off beat roles, which would display his true prowess as an actor . Coming to Rani, her role as the fiery,zesty, "English Janaaoing" Punjabi Kudi Veera is nothing new from the buzzing, bubbly b'wood babes who have become a fad after JWM's Geet and it seemed to me that RM was trying to hard to fit into the role of a vivacious girl, somehow her acting looked very forced or may be it is because the director never explored Veera's liveliness n brought forth her infectious spirit as much as he should have. However, she more than makes up for it in her Man avatar- she was brilliant, spontaneous, funny and quite convincing with a great comic timing as Veer (Veera in a man's garb i.e. the male version of Veera)- I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed watching Veer in action, a special mention to the make up men who did a very good job of making her look like a guy and it is this man portrayal of Rani's which happens to be one of the few highlights of DBH along with the witty, kinda catchy dialogues n wisecracks which are plenty in the movie, you cannot help but wish there were more of Veer, I was not satisfied with whatever was shown of the male version of Rani's character. I also wished there had been a Veera-Sonia angle to the story with the latter falling for the former in her man avatar, like the Viola-Olivia one in the original, in which Olivia falls for Sebastian not knowing that it is actually his twin sister Viola trying to pass herself off as a guy.Rani-Shahid don't really have much chemistry as Veera-Rohan, although Shahid did his part of the job well, I felt Rani spoilt it all by overacting a bit , with her antics which are so wannabe and hence did not pay off. I was not impressed with the way Veera n Rohan's love story was handled either, for the starters I did not see the affection for Rohan in Veer's eyes when (s)he keeps getting hints from the former about him falling for Veera but as a girl she is shown to be willingly reciprocating to his feelings. I was not really satiated with the way they fell for each other although the bonding was there. However, they just ROCKED as Veer-Rohan , I was totally entertained in each n every scene between the Male Version of Rani's character & Rohan - the casual guy rapport despite the other being a gal was shown well.
So finally, these are the things that I liked about the movie-
1.Shahid
2.Veer, i.e., male version of Rani's character
3. Veer-Rohan scenes
4.The witty exchanges between Rohan-Veera in their first meet (the buffalo scene)
5.Humor
6.The hindi-fied English in which Rohan n Veera converse with each other
7.Disco waale khisko n Bangla Bistar Beer Bater songs (Rani was superb as the guy in this one, she got the guy body language and the manly steps right n looked very natural)
8. Father-Son scenes
My Verdict is DBH a decent, time-pass pop corn flick with a few laughs PLUS there is Shahid Kapoor. DBH is not for audiences who don't prefer run of the mill bolly movies. Its not a must-watch but it will not make one pull their hair out or give one headache either.
On a scale of 5, I think I would give it a 2.75 because the movie works in some areas.
EDIT:
Feel free to share what you felt about the movie if you watched it and what you think about my review š
Anupamaa
Health and Fitness
The 50
30