Spoilers ahead…
Luck By Chance, Zoya Akhtar’s first and best film, is also one of the most dispiriting movies ever made. You know those books you find in the self-help section? This was the exact opposite. Consider its… lessons, if you will. Everything’s a fluke. All the hard work in the world may not get you what you want. You may have to sleep around to get ahead. Your friends may not be all that happy for you when you succeed. But that probably won’t matter, as you’re going to have to trample over their feelings if you want to get anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re a self-absorbed prick; great things may still happen to you. No wonder the movie bombed. It was too much like reality. Akhtar learnt her lesson and went on to make Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, which was pure fantasy. One small road trip with best buddies is all it takes to teach you to seize the day, gaze at the stars, have lots of great sex, mend relationships, and have all manner of life-altering epiphanies. It’s the kind of thing people like to hear. It didn’t hurt that the film looked like the love child of a glossy tourism brochure and Kate Middleton’s wedding cake. To put things in perspective, Hrithik Roshan was only the fourth or fifth most beautiful thing on screen.
Akhtar’s third film, Dil Dhadakne Do, takes its title from the song that played over the opening credits of Zindagi, and like that film, this, too, is a road movie –rather, a sea movie. A super-rich Punjabi patriarch – Kamal Mehra (Anil Kapoor) – and his wife Neelam (Shefali Shah) invite family and friends on a cruise to Turkey and Greece to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary. As with Zindagi, the metaphors write themselves. Families are like a cruise – you’re stuck with the same people. Sometimes, the voyage is choppy. Sometimes there are clear skies. You may find yourself adrift, but, at the end of the day (not to mention the end of the movie), your family is your lifeboat, saving you from drowning, getting you safely to shore. In an early scene, Kamal sees his son Kabir (Ranveer Singh) in a spot of trouble during a business presentation, and he jumps in to save Kabir. There’s an echo of this at the end – Kamal literally jumps in to save Kabir. Some people learn screenwriting from Syd Field. Zoya Akhtar appears to have learnt the craft from a shoelace. Everything crisscrosses and loops around just so, in neat little bows.
Of course, there are worse things than fetishistically engineered (some might say twee) feel-good movies – and at least the idea behind Dil Dhadakne Do is a good one. This is essentially an update of a 1960s family melodrama. It’s all here – the line about how, after marriage, beti parayi ho gayi; the concern over log kya kahenge when they hear about a divorce; the mangni toot gayi tragedy; a father’s expectation that his daughter should gift him a grandson; the rich girl falling in love with her father’s manager ka beta… These tropes are refracted through a soap-opera prism, and staged with an emphasis on setting and character that those older films did not bother too much with. Neelam, for instance, is a stress eater – she worries about her weight and is often seen in front of mirrors. Kabir likes to fly. Kabir’s brother-in-law Manav (an ill-fitting Rahul Bose; just wait till you see him attempt a wolf whistle in a song) – he’s married to Kabir’s sister Ayesha (Priyanka Chopra) – is a mama’s boy. Mama, meanwhile, keeps announcing that she’s suffering – from vertigo, from asthma, from arthritis. And the family pet, a bullmastiff named Pluto Mehra, likes to dispense trite observations in Aamir Khan’s voice, neon-highlighting the goings-on. Maybe this is Akhtar acknowledging that Khan is the industry’s top dog.
On paper, this is a can’t-go-wrong situation. A lot of good-looking stars, many of them good actors. A director who has the most exquisite taste. And a complicit audience, aware that this is one of those times we are at the doctor’s reception room and, after a cursory glance at the magazines, are going to choose People over The Caravan. But the film never finds its footing, and it’s not just the language. I have spoken earlier about the LHHE syndrome in the Akhtar siblings’ films: “Listening Hindi, Hearing English.” Kamal hears of Kabir’s relationship with Noorie (Ridhima Sud) and asks, “Tumhaare iraade kya hain?” It’s an American father from the fifties asking, “What are your intentions, young man?” Couldn’t he just say something like “Us ladki ke saath tum kya kar rahe ho?” Elsewhere, from a broken-hearted Noorie, we get this gem: “Mera fiancé ne mujhe mandap pe chhod diya.” Oh no, sweetheart. You’d have said you got dumped.
After a while, it’s easy enough to overlook this – it is what it is. What’s unforgivable is the complete absence of life. The only heart that’s beating here is the one in the title. There’s a difference between finely detailed and just… slow. Sitting through the 170 minutes (seriously?) of Dil Dhadakne Do is like entering a five-star hotel. The outside noise disappears. It’s all very hush-hush. You feel you’re stuck in an elevator and the damn muzak won’t stop. When Karan Johar made a similar multi-starrer about a dysfunctional upper-crust family, he infused the proceedings with deliciously vulgar energy. The look may have been five-star but the feel was like that of a ghee-soaked dhaba. It was silly, it was fun. Scene after farcical scene in Dil Dhadakne Do cries out for Almodóvarian camp, but Akhtar seems to think she’s staging Chekhov. All those silences. All those meaningful looks. All those carefully calibrated line readings. You may wonder if, after filling out the soapy plot with Reema Kagti (whose Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. was another journey filled with dysfunction, though on a bus), Akhtar experienced some kind of soap-opera twist herself, amnesia or something. What else could explain the disconnect between the material and the movie?
Every problem is a cliché. Every outcome is preordained. And there are too many characters with too little to do. Son wants to step out of domineering dad’s shadow, daughter wants to end an unhappy marriage, and so forth. Had any one of these issues been stretched to movie length, it may have been affecting, but with Akhtar directing with a finger on the fast-forward button, there’s nothing and no one to care about. Yes, this is a light film and not really a drama, but it’s so airless that even the screwball bits – except the ones that involve Kabir; Ranveer Singh is a lot of fun– don’t get a chance to breathe. I liked the subplot with Ayesha, who’s a fascinating character. She’s an achiever, but her successes haven’t given her much confidence, probably because she’s been so undermined all her life. There’s a great scene where she pushes Manav away in bed and then feels sorry (or guilty; or maybe both) and reaches out to him again. These terrific shadings deserve a life-size portrait. We get a picture postcard.
The parts with Kabir and Farha (Anushka Sharma) have some zing. I loved the cut to Ayesha’s face when Kabir tells his parents about Farha. You expect a cut to their horrified faces. But here, we see Ayesha thinking, Dude, did you just say what I think you said? It’s nice to see Anil Kapoor’s eighties-style intensity bounce off Farhan Akhtar’s two-decades-later nonchalance. The latter plays a Caravan-style journalist named Sunny, who’s slightly bemused in the midst of all these People. I wanted more of him. His last scene is a joke – not the nice kind. Note to Zoya: The next time you make one of your life-is-a-journey movies, probably on a plane, with Louboutin-heeled stewardesses, write a bigger role for your brother. Even if his costar is just a Hermès bag.
Copyright ©2015 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Sougata
June 6, 2015
Killer review
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Puneeta
June 6, 2015
This is similar to your review of OK Kanmani.
Why cant nice films just be. Why does it have to be vulgar with energy?!) This coming from a die-hard, I watch it every Sunday K3G fan) I watched it yesterday and everyone was laughing in the theatre. Its a cute film.
I actually thought Ranveer’s character was fabulous and his graph was beautiful. He reminded me of so many guys who I have dismissed as “Good for nothing” when in reality something else must have been churning inside.
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Priya
June 6, 2015
I don’t disagree with any of the objections raised (hokey metaphors, cliched character arcs, heavy-handed narrations, etc.), but I seem to have enjoyed the movie despite all of this. The screwball moments, of which, yes, Kabir got the lionshare of (standouts being envisioning his plan to keep his plane & the confrontation scene at the hospital) seem to have glossed over the preaching to make the film fun.
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The Guy Next Door (@guy_in_london)
June 6, 2015
“the film looked like the love child of a glossy tourism brochure and Kate Middleton’s wedding cake”
Brilliant words !!!
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Rahul
June 6, 2015
I kept thinking , why couldn’t this movie be called Zindagi na milegi dobara returns , until in the end, Aamir khan, in his annoying voice, explained the significance of the title. I was so overwhelmed that I wanted to stand on the seat and clap.
“Wo unke saath hain – they are together”. Nobody talks like that in hindi. I think this is the biggest problem. Its baffling how dad Javed lets Farhan get away with this kind of writing. Probably not so baffling considering Farhan plays characters somewhat estranged from the dad in these Zoya Akhtar movies.
My bigger worry is that these movies create a class of people that start talking like that.
Zoya takes characters and keeps chipping away at them till they are reduced to archetypes. But within those boundaries the actors did well. Not mentioning others who are competent actors anyway, even Priyanka , who i find very irritating in all of her star vehicles, managed pretty well here in my opinion.
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dreamwhisperer
June 6, 2015
Anushka’s character is Farah, not Farha. nit successfully picked.
I was really wanting to watch this movie. For Farhan. But now I think I’ll just kick ass it…
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TR
June 6, 2015
The title of your review encapsulates perfectly my feelings for this movie!
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sachita
June 6, 2015
umm.. havent watched this one. But did you just call K3G as good? It was 5 hours of pure torture. ( failed watching it after two attempts). There was no energy in that emotional vulgarity.
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gvsafamily
June 6, 2015
Loved the review, in spite of not having seen the movie or having plans to do so.
You hit it out of the park with the first para and the last line 🙂
IMO, any day even ‘Bag’wati would make a more expressive co-star to Farhan (or anyone) than Ms. Kaif
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Utkal
June 6, 2015
Two decades back, writing on Sooraj Barjatya’s Hum Aapke Hain Koun…?, I argued why it was the quintessential Indian film. The American film mirrored the American society’s reverence for individualism and had a lone hero, a cowboy or an explorer engaged in an act of heroism at its core. For the French and the European cinema it was man-woman relationship at the core. But for Indians it was the family, and no other film before HAHK placed its narrative solely within the ideal of the Indian family. Now we have Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do, not so much celebrating the Indian family as raising some tough questions about it.
Once again I must thank the Indian film reviewers for giving me a great time at a film. It is impossible to miss all the reviews coming out on the very day of its release or even a day before, an almost all of them had given the impression that it was a lightweight and light-hearted romp. Well, the film was anything but. If anything, it was a much heavier film than Zindagi Na Milega Dobara.
I got hooked to the theme of the film within the first few minutes when Kabir tells his mother that he has no interest in running the business and at the same time the only wish, if he was granted one, was that the plane his father owns should not be sold. I knew at that instant that Zoya was an honest director who was letting her characters be who they are and not sugarcoat or airbrush them in any way to fit a preconceived template.
The questions she raises about the Indian family are not new, and they will be asked as long as the Indian family continues in its present format. This is epitomized well my Kabir in his taunt to his father in reply to Senior Mehra’s talk of niti and sanskriti of the older generation. Kabir talks of his father’s philandering ways and his mother’s marital loyalty being nothing but a direct consequence of her not having any place to go. It was brave of Zoya to make a son say this about his parents. But I have often wondered about this while bringing up teen-aged children. Why do Indian parents appropriate the rights of telling their children what to study, how to lead their life and whom to marry? Are they leading such exemplary lives themselves? And just because they are older, they know better? And with our system of kanyadan, will a daughter be given the same status as the son? How is that possible if a marriage is considered a as a ritual of a daughter leaving one’s family and becoming a part of another.
The crisis that the Mehra family is facing is a good construct to frame these questions in the right perspective.
Zoya takes her time in building up the drama, but once the drama gathers traction it is an engaging presentation. The ensemble cast is in top form. I read somewhere that while making ‘ Neerja’ on the PanAm hijacking, director Ram Madhavan auditioned people for the role of all the 223 passengers because each of them was going to be a significant member of the cast. I think Zoya applied the same criteria while choosing the passengers on the cruise. But the main characters played by Anil Kapoor, Shefali Chhaya, Ranveer Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and Anushka Sharma are all in superb form and the film’s chief pleasure is in watching these actors essay their well-etched roles. Even Rahul Bose manages to come through as an alpha male Punjabi quite convincingly and Zarina Wahab as his mother is chilling. I was touched by the actor playing Farhan’s father, the manager. Such an epitome of a decent human being.
Farhan’s entry makes a big impact in the film. His confrontation scene with Rahul Bose was the kind of scene that gave the film its mojo.
But the film has its shortcomings. Films like Piku ,TWMR, NH 10, Dum Laga Ke Haisa and Badalpur had shortcomings , but those got submerged under their chutzpah. And chutzpah is what DDD lacks to an extent. It is a little calculated, the script structure planned and the pencil lines of the plan are there to see. Except for the last lifeboat scene which can be accepted as cinematic license, DDD is more real, closer to life and more sincere to its theme. But for me that’s not always a winning deal. Reality for me is not good cinema. Craziness is, Energy is. A compulsive sucking in of the audience to the films own world is. An elegant aesthetic pattern is. DDD lacks all of these. There are two scenes which ramp up the craziness quotient well. The one where Divya vomit’s on Rana’s shoes and Kabir makes those quips – ‘ Epic or e puke’ ‘ Vomitonno’ – and the other when Senior Mehra chances upon Rana and Noorie making out, and instead of the couple getting embarrassed, it is he who wants to hide and slink away. There are many witty lines and funny sequences throughout the film, but they don’t have the zing and crazy energy of the two sequences that really fly. (In contrast, almost every gag in TWMR has that kind of zing.) The dramatic sequences on the other hand work better and I wish Zoya had written it as a serious Ibsenian drama of human failings and parent-children tension rather than a social comedy turned serious. And I wish they had thought of a more ‘realistic’ climax than the airport rom-com kind of climax they have chosen, in light of the turn the film had already taken into the domain of serious drama.
Then there is the length of the film, which seems a little desultory because of its sitcom-style narration. If I was the script doctor I would have moved the story out of the ship a couple of times or more and flashed back to earlier lives of the characters and would have come back to the cruise for the climax. That kind of structuring has helped films like Rang De Basanti and Bhag Mikha Bhag appear more colorful and lively that they would have been with a straight-linear narrative. Under the constraints, Pluto’s commentary was a good idea and a film like Bombay Velvet would have benefitted from a similar commentary.
I was very disappointed with the two set-piece songs: Girls Like To Swing and Galiyan Goodiyan. In today’s times you stop the film’s narration to stage a song only if you are going to give the audience a rollicking good time. ‘ Banno’ and ‘Ghani Bawri’ in TWMR did that. But not these two. I appreciate the challenge of the Anushka’s dance number. It had to be a number learnt in London’s dance schools and classy enough to be performed for the guests of a cruise. It is not easy to make such a sing authentic and entertaining. But ‘ Kaisi Yeh Paheli’ with Rekha in ‘Parineeta’ managed to do that and wish Zoya had worked harder to get something as good. The Galiyan Goodiyan song is perfect in thought and so flat in execution. ‘Sajni Vari vari’ in Reema’s own Honeymon Travels had more free-flowing energy. If it was meant to be a string of couplets that the people improvised, it lacked that half-cooked feel. It sounded like just another Javed Akhtar lyrics. The ‘ Wah wah Ramji’ or ‘ Sambadhan’ or ‘ Dhikk tana’ songs in HAH are better examples of how it should be done, where the characters’ own stories and feelings are built into what they sing. I wish someone like Amitabh Bhattacharya had written it. The ‘ Pehli Baar’ song is nicely written and staged. But here too I was thinking how a bit of Mani magic (like in the song ‘Paranthu Sella va’ in ‘OK Kanmani’) would have made the song impossible to forget.
But the shortcoming at a more basic level was the inconsistency of tone. ‘Badalpur’, ‘NH 10’, DLKHS’, ‘Piku’ and ‘ TWMR’ are films which appeared to be consistent whole, each cut from a single specific cloth. But this one doesn’t seem to have made up its mind. And that dilutes one’s enjoyment of the film.
But as I said, there is much good writing and brilliant performances, some well-written funny lines and some well-staged dramatic scenes; and most importantly a strong theme that makes you think. That’s quite enough take-home for the price of a ticket. In fact I am willing to watch the film again for the performances alone.
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Akshay
June 6, 2015
Found the movie to be decent actually except for the voice-over from Aamir, it made the proceedings loquacious
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Anu Warrier
June 6, 2015
I’ve the same opinion about Luck by Chance – I thought that was her bravest, most honest film ever. Somehow, she’s diluted that clarity for the fluff. That said, I caught the trailer of this film when I went to watch Tanu Weds Manu Returns, and thought it was a film I wouldn’t mind watching. I agree with Puneeta – sometimes, it is nice to just watch paint dry and not have to think too much. 🙂
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vishal yogin
June 6, 2015
I am not sure why I kept thinking the title was, “Dil Dhadakta Hai To Dhadakne Do” hehee
And you made a typo, “The latter plays a Caravan-style journalist named Sunny”
The latter should read as former ?
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AMandana
June 6, 2015
If I may be so bold as to review your review, permit me to say that have become too obsessed with the low-hanging fruit. I used to read your reviews for the magnificent insight they provided, for your obvious love of cinema and your refusal to classify films as black and white, good and bad. But lately your tone has become far too cynical and you seem more concerned with cramming in as many witticisms and puns as possible rather that contemplating on and reviewing the film. Dil Dhadakane was soporific in pace and inconsistent in tone but it had many vignettes that were both poignant and astute in their portrayal of North Indian family dynamics. The old BR would have dwelt more on this and spent less time trying to be the cinema hall jester. Alas, you seem to have sacrificed substance for a relentless, spiteful onslaught of sarcastic barbs.
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brangan
June 7, 2015
Rahul: I know I’m in the minority here, but I quite like PC. She has this tendency to get a bit affected, but when controlled — i.e. under a good director like Zoya — she’s capable of good stuff.
Anu Warrier: LBC also has my most favourite Hrithik performance. That scene when he realises — standing next to Karan Johar — that his exit from that film may have birthed his nemesis… out of the world. I can’t think of too many actors who’d be secure enough to play this scene. It’s too… real.
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brangan
June 7, 2015
AMandana: I respect your opinion and am not going to argue. But just one thing:
it had many vignettes that were both poignant and astute in their portrayal of North Indian family dynamics. The old BR would have dwelt more on this
This seems to indicate that I found these things “poignant and astute” and YET chose not to write about them.
That’s not the case.
The things I liked about the film, I have mentioned — eg. “I liked the subplot with Ayesha, who’s a fascinating character.”
So it’s not like I chose to omit writing about stuff I liked and instead tried to be “the cinema hall jester”. It’s that the other things just did not strike me as interesting, and so I did not care to write about them.
Of course, I do not deny that you found these things “poignant and astute”.
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olemisstarana
June 7, 2015
BR: Hmmm… may I add a wrinkle in your established looking-English-talking-Hindi theory? perhaps things are a little more familiar to me when I hear this patois, because it’s a particular kind of English-Hindi that I am quite familiar with, coming from an English medium private-school background in a Hindi speaking city. We do talk like this, this awkward shoe-ing in of English in passages that lend themselves neatly to pat Hindi phrases. It’s an in, almost and I find myself doing it constantly, gives me a certain amount of intimacy with those who share the same language with me – even my accent changes. I think my education and perhaps even my facility with both languages might fall in the same quadrant of these characters (even though my disposable income certainly doesn’t).
Particularly the “Tumhare irade kya hain?” line is such a familiar phrase that I cannot imagine it being substituted by “Tum us ladki ke saath etc. etc.” That just changes the meaning and implication and color of this exchange, imo.
That being said, I cannot believe this is the same ZA that made Luck By Chance. I almost feel like she’s pulled a Madhur on us all.
Also, salty salty – I like this get-off-my-lawn BR, exquisitely restrained and all of course.
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AMandana
June 7, 2015
Brangan- Let me try and explain myself better. The reason that I am a long-time reader (and admirer) is because you struck me as such a generous, observant and insightful reviewer. Even in films that you didn’t absolutely love and that other cirtics wrote off you still managed to find little nuggets of beauty, skill and truth. I’d read your reviews and re-watch a film, and the film would always appear all the richer for having read your viewes.
But lately – and not just with Dil Dhadakne- I feel you’ve perhaps become a tad jaded and stopped being so generous and observant a viewer. I feel as if you’ve stopped looking for insights and instead started searching for opportunities to make barbs. When you love a film you reviewers are still a delight to read. But otherwise, your claws really come out. To me this polarized style of review, of categorizing a film as either mostly good or mostly bad is less interesting than your older, more nuanced and rewarding reviews.
I’m not claiming to read your mind and I might be completely off the mark in this diagnosis. This is merely the impression that I – a faithful reader of your work and a cinema lover – have discerned from your reviews and musings of late.
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Lissy
June 7, 2015
AMandana: I do not agree with your comment about BR’s film reviews. Please read his superlative Piku review – there is nothing cynical there.
How do you classify a film critic as ‘Old BR’ and ‘New BR’ based on his writings ?
P.S: Who is Utkal and why does he write his ‘reviews’ under the guise of ‘comments’ on this page instead of writing it on his own blog?
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Anon
June 7, 2015
Was thinking why we don’t have these kind of movies in Tamil?
Kamal in the Anil role, Urvashi as his wife, Shruti in the Anusha role, Nayanthara in PC’s, Simbu in Ranveer’s and an extended Danush cameo in Farhan’s.. no Santhanam or Vivek..
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apala
June 7, 2015
BR, I have not watched the film yet – watching UV again on HeroTalkies (legally online!) on my 70″ 4K Sony SmartTV (sorry for bragging)!
Hope “Kaakkaa Muttai” comes here soon.
Really Kick-ass review dude!
“The only heart that’s beating here is the one in the title”.
Ha! 🙂
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Madan
June 7, 2015
AMandana: FWIW, when I told my friend that BRangan had drawn a comparison, albeit on a limited point, between Piku and As Good As It Gets, his response was along the lines of what you said, that it’s all good or bad with nothing in the middle. The irony is this is precisely Rangan’s own complaint about the way views are expressed on films these days. I am on the fence here, I will neither totally agree or disagree with your views there, except to say that I doubt whether this is necessarily a new wrinkle in his writing. If you read his ZNMD review, just the opening para itself is pretty nasty. 😀 Also the Agneepath review. I don’t know, I love some snark quotient in reviews. I had to go watch that silly overbloated remake on the very day Nadal and Djoko played out a modern day epic on a tennis court in the Aus Open and kept cursing my luck for a few days thereafter. At least reading BRangan’s caustic review provided some succour for my soul. Why should all of us have to like every A-list film anyway? And from my experience in reviewing music albums, I would say that once you don’t like a given work, it gets very difficult to control the urge to write something at least a bit nasty about it. To that end, at least his reviews for even the films he doesn’t like do have a lot of detail. He does explain very clearly what he doesn’t like about a film and whether one likes or dislikes those same things in the same film is down to tastes.
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Gradwolf
June 7, 2015
Wonderful! Talk about dead air. I also wanted more of Farhan and that nerdy girl who is really the one throwing all the judgmental raised eyebrows at these people. Both of them terribly underused!
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badri
June 7, 2015
I always feel if i look at my watch for what time it is, then, the movie is no good ! With DDD, I must have checked like some 8-9 times for sure.
LBC, IMO too, is the best film of Zoya (considering she made only three), and have no clue why a few treat ZNMD as some kinda brand or cult.
Watched the movie and kept wondering what on earth was Zoya trying to convey through this ‘saga’. All those misunderstanding scenes between the characters appeared as if they came running straight from Ektas stable. and what’s with the Priyadarshan influenced climax!!! For me, the best scene was Ranveer’s uncontrollable laughter during the confrontation scene; he was too natural 😛 😛
and, Aamir was beyond my tolerance level ! Thought he mentioned somewhere that he would do a cameo or related only if it has some significance to the story! Even if it was done by Tusshar Kapoor, it wouldve had the same annoying effect!
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Vijay
June 7, 2015
I think someone’s said something broadly similar above, but I’m in the odd place of agreeing with every single one of your negatives (except that no, I didn’t think Farhan Akhtar was particularly impressive–he plays the intellectual-laidback with panache, but isn’t that the man himself, rather than the role?). but I’m inclined to be forgiving rather than critical of this film (I think that bias is what AMandana is expressing… that to me and her–if I may be allowed to read her mind–this was a movie that was good in parts, bad in parts, and I’d have liked a sensible perspective on the good).
yes, it was at least half an hour too long, the voiceover sucked, there was a definite rich-peoples’-problems tone to the whole thing, and the ending was a bit twee. but somehow there never was a tone of seriousness to any part of the movie, that I could make out (in fact your reference to long silences had me stumped, because I don’t remember a single one). Instead, the movies that this one reminded me of were honeymoon travels (-on-a-ship, as you said), but even more of wodehouse. it’s the same sort of people, the same tropes (rich kid falls for chorus girl, pretending to be engaged to someone as a coverup), and the same absurdism. it’s where the movie strays from that nuttiness that it fails.
and that’s the only function that the talking dog served, imo. to ground the movie in a world where dogs talk in the voice of king khan (although I wish he’d talked less, and talked as abhay deol. 😛 ).
the people I watched it with were squirming in their seats and wishing it would end, and I was rather embarrassed at liking it. so I get where you’re coming from. this is just on the other hand
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SN
June 7, 2015
Great review as always. You have put into words very eloquently what I felt when I watched the movie last night. Just a very well garnished but ultimately very drab fare – very much like five star food, which is pretty looking but dumbed down or made bland to fit all palates. One of my colleagues called London Indian food as “bastardised” – this felt like the same done to 60s or 70s Hindi movie that dealt with all the useless cliches that you mentioned in your third paragraph so I won’t go into them. But they were infuriating nevertheless. Even more so because we had so many movies set in small town India over the last few years that showed Indian kids have moved on and got liberated. And we have this regression from the Akhtars. Maybe they should pack up and go to Hollywood and make English movies because that’s the language they think in anyway.
Why are these big movies so bereft of life? Is it because the people they play are so stinking rich and way up in the clouds that they are not real anyway? We know that the director wanted us to see the shallowness of the society and friends but did we need to have multiple scenes dedicated to it? I remember one scene (in a golf course incidentally) in Monsoon Wedding where Naseeruddin Shah asks one of his friends for some short term liquidity and in an instant he broadcasts that as Shah being in a financial tight spot. Point proven about multiple things about Delhi life… Here instead we have what you call appropriately “meaningful looks” again and again. I had told my wife wryly before the movie that we had already seen the best parts in the trailer (and needless to say I got dragged to the movie nevertheless)… And the truth wasn’t too far away I thought. What is this with directors nowadays who make movies that are more appropriate to television both in their length, pace and the regression about “sanskaar”, WTF. about summarises the movie for me.
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SN
June 7, 2015
And also I felt there was certainly room for good old law of averages to start working – it seemed to me that I had watched too many good Hindi movies this year and the run was too good to be true… Badlapur, Piku, TWMR, etc… So appropriately enough it has to be the big budget big starrer that should prick the bubble.
The other thing I feel is that most actors nowadays don’t really “act” – they just play themselves on screen… Farhan Akhtar being a great example – the only movie I felt he was acting was Milkha Singh (particularly his physical performance) apart from which he is how he comes across in interviews, etc.
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karan
June 7, 2015
Someone must tell me who played Vinod. What a performance! I can’t believe nobody has mentioned him yet.
I loved the movie despite its flaws. I agree with nearly everything you said but I was able to get lost in its comic rhythms and melodrama. To each their own.
I do think it could have been a lot stronger with an extra half hour to flesh things out. I wonder if we’ll ever see a three and a half hour movie again. Only movie I remember from the last five years or so to even go over three hours was Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, and most years only having one film in the 170-180 minute range. As grateful as I am that a lot of movies hover around 140 minutes these days, I miss longer films, and I would like to see filmmakers like Zoya go for the epic runtimes.
Honestly, my biggest disappointment in this was the music. There’s not a single knockout song on screen. Gallan Goodiyaan might be my favorite song this year, but it didn’t jump off the screen like I was expecting. I appreciate the single take and all, but it lacked energy and joy, and felt clumsily placed in the film. Pehli Baar is great fun and was the best utilized song in the film, but it felt stretched out in the middle. It starts and ends really well but I would have liked more progression in between. And Girls Like to Swing is fine, it makes sense in the movie, i just don’t find the song to be that great. The other two songs aren’t bad but I’m glad they weren’t in the film, I don’t think they are strong enough. My complaints are funny because this movie uses its music better than 90% of movies, but I was expecting more from Zoya. I think Senorita is one of the best staged songs in recent years, and ZNMD has a really terrific soundtrack overall, so this was a bit of a let down.
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udhaysankar
June 7, 2015
Brangan: The accent or language dynamics affecting our viewing is an very common problem. Let me describe “the mani-ratnam tamil” problem that plagues his movies a lot. I don’t deny his craftsmanship or directorial acumen,but my sole problem with Mani Ratnam are his dialogues that often come off as very-much contrived and yank me out of the authenticity of the characters. I accept that people do mix English and Tamil, but they do not do it very randomly as in the case of Tara and Aadhi. She says “Romba ‘pretty’aa irukka”, fine. “Romba ‘happy’ aa irukka fine again. But,later she goes on to utter dialogues such as “Durai’kku sollitu poga ennavaam?”. “48 mani neram en kooda pesaadha” where it should have been “48 hous ennoda pesaadha.”. There isn’t a consistency in the way his characters speak. Now considering the language background that these characters were brought up in, I feel these dialogues are completely distracting. And also comes the way he develops such conversations. For instance Aadhi’s sister-in-law is searching aadhi’s room. Tara comes in. She asks “Inga enna nadakkudhu?”. Tara replies “Oru blackmail nadakkudhu’nu ninakiren”. Seriously? ,Now I’m not ruling out the possibility that she might say that. But, putting myself in that situation I would have said “Neenga enna Blackmail panreenga, adhaan nadakuthu”, or something else. But definitely not “Oru blackmail nadakkudhu’nu ninakkiren. The she goes on to say “ulagam renda undanja maadhiri moonjiya vachikaadha”. Even Aadhi when he wants to scold Tara says “makku chaniyane”, not “saniyane”. C’mon,this I feel is because of the atmosphere MR was brought up in and tha tamil he was exposed, Cause ‘makku-chaniyane’ is really outdated and ancient. These instances rob his characters of their authenticity right away. One way to counter this problem is to hire an young dialogue writer who is more in tune with the vibe of the present generation. But,I don’t feel that’s gonna happen.
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udhaysankar
June 7, 2015
Madan: Pity you had to miss that match. One of the best in the past decade of tennis. Even that Nadal-Fed wimbledon final in 2008 pales in comparison being more elegant and silky. But this one was complete brawling, where each of them stretched it to their limits. ‘Gladiatorial’ would be the only word that would come close to defining that match. Fortunately, I didn’t miss out on it.
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Tambi Dude
June 7, 2015
Karan: His name of Manoj Pahwa. He is a very good actor and has been around for quite some time.
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Anu Warrier
June 7, 2015
@olemisstarana – I couldn’t ‘like’ your comment because WordPress insists on asking me to log in, so I’m putting it here as a separate comment. 🙂
And this line: It’s an in, almost and I find myself doing it constantly, gives me a certain amount of intimacy with those who share the same language with me – even my accent changes.
That resonates with me especially. I do that All. The. Time. (I do it in Malayalam as well. I come from North Kerala; when I talk to someone from the south of the state, my dialect, my intonation, everything changes.) And I agree with you completely about >I>Tumhaare iraade kya hain? That is such a natural, normal thing to say, no? Actually, BR, the Tum us ladki ke saath… is the clunky line here. 🙂
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SR
June 7, 2015
“Scene after farcical scene in Dil Dhadakne Do cries out for Almodóvarian camp”
…… really??!! Pedro should tie you up and shut you down!! True, Shefali Shah’s character did look like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Ayesha didn’t seem to like the skin she lived in, and Rahul Bose was all about his mother… but truly, let’s not put the two director’s together. That said, Zoya Akhtar has legs – LBC is a great movie – let her prove her economic clout & she’ll return to form and leave these ZNMD/DDD….types for her bhaiyya. I await the day she does create something like ‘All about my mother’ with Konkana Sen Sharma or even PC…. a pregnant nun with AIDS (Ms Akhtar is not in Almodovar headspace yet, but I look forward to her mind-f_ck).
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udhaysankar
June 7, 2015
olemisstarana: “tumaare iraade kya hai?” sounds a bit fishy for because, whenever I want to speak in hindi, my mind automatically translates words from tamil to hindi. Like “Andha ponnoda enna pannitu irundha?” = “Tum us ladki ke saath kya kar rahe ho?”, and thus “tumaare iraade kya hai?” feels very odd to me. But, that’s me.
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vijay
June 7, 2015
udaysankar, agree with you on dialogue in Mani’s films and the inconsistency. Couple more Mani’isms – having the heroine despite her nativity/language issues dub in her own voice which leads to funny accents. This is something he has been doing since Amala from Agni natchathiram days. Maybe he finds it cute if the heroine talks with a funny accent. Like esha deol in ayudha ezhuththu or Trisha (even if her native is tamil). Luckily he didnt try it with Ash I think.
Another is the overly cute lines like “unna paatha enakku i love you sollanumnu thonala, nee azhaga irukennu ninaikala, aana idhellam nadandhidomonu bayama irukku” and such. Characters speak and behave like this only in his films. His is a truly cinematic world 🙂
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olemisstarana
June 8, 2015
@Anu Warrier – Haha, yes…! I feel a little fraud-y after, as well and the husband is always gobsmacked at just how telugu I can be when I think no one but the bandhus are watching.
One more thing about the language and the point I raised earlier, BR… this English-Hindi thing works for me in some places, not everywhere. If someone were to make an Anurag Kashyap movie with such language, that would definitely not work, but in a movie like Monsoon Wedding, which is the blueprint all these ZNMD and DDD type movies should be studying intently, it works gangbusters. Everyone has that South Delhi accent, that interesting inflection at the end of the sentence that is (almost) snot a whine, but used for emphasis. The Punjabis are theth Punjabis where they need to be, of course.
In the Monsoon Wedding vein, the number of plots that movie tackled… and succeeded in a stellar way. And how long was the movie – not more than 2 hours, perhaps, with songs and all? So, perhaps it’s not the time devoted to the plots and subplots, it just needs a director who hasn’t sold her soul for box office acceptance.
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brangan
June 8, 2015
This isn’t about lines in Hinglish but about people using English constructions translated to Hindi. Monsoon Wedding did not have this flavour at all. It was far more… natural.
I have in mind another movie that’s filled with narrative cliches from top to bottom. With a lot of speaking parts. With a lot of relationship issues. But written and directed superbly, with astounding nuance and energy — (the two needn’t be strangers). And a superb entertainer.
Oh yeah. Directed by a woman too.
It’s called Bangalore Days.
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olemisstarana
June 8, 2015
@udayshankar: Aha! But you see, I would consider myself a native speaker of Hindi, and the line sounds and feels just perfectly natural to me… it’s almost a truncated version of “Tumhaaare irade kya hain, barkhurdaar?” a line I could see Nasir Hussain say in a 60s movie. Very Hindi – Urdu. I think you Tamil types (BR!) – translating first from Hindi to English and then Tamil are making a pahaad out of raee. (I keed, I keed).
But yes, the larger point BR makes stands true.
@BR: I am going to have to check this out… though I do not speak the language at all! Your praise is damning, and yet… compelling.
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ThouShaltNot
June 8, 2015
Aadhi when he wants to scold Tara says “makku chaniyane”, not “saniyane”. C’mon,this I feel is because of the atmosphere MR was brought up in and tha tamil he was exposed, Cause ‘makku-chaniyane’ is really outdated and ancient.
Makku plaasthri and makku mundam are de rigueur while cussing. Saniyane tends to be standalone. Makku Chaniyane may be Mani’s way of injecting a “cho chweet” angle into the oodal? 😉
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gvsafamily
June 8, 2015
udhaysankar/vijay – agree completely on the stilted and unnatural dialogue/mannerisms in Maniratnam movies. To the extent that I find it very distracting most times (like the much parodied ‘aaa’ crying scenes that Kamal does so very often)
But then, these seem to be lapped up by the audience, right? In fact the famous Alaipayuthe Madhavan dialogue that you mention is considered cult, even though it probably borders on the ridiculous, if you come to think of it 🙂 So are we a minority here or it is just that any romantic fare offered by brand Maniratnam is just accepted by people as it is however unrealistic they find it?
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brangan
June 8, 2015
Oh, it doesn’t sound fake to me at all when Nasir Hussain says that line. There, I do not flash back to a certain kind of American pop-culture representation, a certain kind of dad asking his daughter’s date: “What are your intentions, young man?” Here, for some reason, I do. Many lines of the Akhtars sound American to me, and would be perfectly fine in English (a lot of these characters are wannabe Westerners in a away), and the only reason they seem to be in Hindi is to appeal to a larger audience. Some of the lines made me wince.
About Mani Ratnam, the voices don’t bother me as much. Because there are a lot of people who speak Tamil in a slightly stilted way. It would be odd to see a historical film in which people spoke this way, but in his films I don’t mind.
But yes. The dialogues do come off odd at times. For instance, very time someone said “kaamam” in OKK, I winced. That’s such an odd word for these kids.
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Rahul
June 8, 2015
“This isn’t about lines in Hinglish but about people using English constructions translated to Hindi. ”
Indeed. I have heard bloopers such as – “mujhe pata hai aap kaha se aa rahe hain .. “. “tum is maamle ko kambal ke neeche mat chhupao” etc. Incidentally, this factor was very interestingly played out in the pre poll canvassing in Delhi elections. BJP delhi wanted to talk about “anarchist DNA” of kejriwal, so some fluent in English campaign manager must have drafted the copy and handed to an intern to translate in hindi, who ended up with “updravi gotra” in place of “anarchist DNA”, which Kejriwal milked by claiming that BJP is demeaning his gotra, or subcaste. Of Course, complaining about “anarchist DNA”, with the interpretation that parents are being blamed, would have been rather silly, because its a legitimate expression. But then this expression does not readily translate into hindi. Not sure why they do not go the route of Delhi Belly and use English expressions as is. I am sure no one would as much as bat an eyelid.
I am observing something interesting in the Indian restaurants of North America. The Indian dishes are hyphenated with a generic English descriptor, so as to make them understandable to all and sundry. So Chai becomes chai tea latte, pulao and biryani become pulao rice and biryani rice respectively, naan becomes naan bread, paneer becomes paneer cheese, kulfi becomes kulfi icecream and so on. We have a good laugh about it.
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sanjana
June 8, 2015
Cruises are boring affairs after the fourth day. And then for those with water phobia, every jerk(not ranveer) and tilt evoke fears of drowning like Titanic. And then Claustrophobia of a confined space surrounded by menacing waves. Just like long distance flight.
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Prasad
June 8, 2015
My 2 cents
There are lot of Directors who may come under the tag of “One movie Wonder” and Zoya is not an exception to that I think. IMO “Luck By Chance” is one movie complete in all sense and was fresh . Infact her Brother also comes under this bracket with “Dil Chahtha Hai” . We haven’t see anything significant from him also in the capacity of a Director.
Probabaly Zoya’s next movie might be about “Three friends during their Journey to Mars” who knows. Sometimes it is irritating to always cast her Brother and give him all the best lines in the movie. It happened with ZNMD (The same way VP does for Premji).
Why can’t she think of a Story which is more organic and more relatable? I don’t have complains that she target’s only “Urban Audience” but if she has a story which is universal why not go for it? I can very well sense she herself wants to get “Typecasted” which may not take her anywhere. This template kind of approach will not work!(E.g Madhur Bhandarkar).
Also seems we’re moving from “meta Movie” to “Dysfunctional Family” and coincidentally was browsing through TV and saw “Little Miss Sunshine”…dysfunctional family theme handle with such energy and intrinsic humour without any cliche. Every one of them has a issue and it is handled in a very matured way. Of course “Piku” also was a terrific attempt of late.
Any such movies can you all think of in this Genre which are recent?
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Utkal
June 8, 2015
I don’t know what is the big fuss about thinking in English and speaking in Hindi. This is what all the young people in urban India do today. Even the speeches that English-medium-educated politicians that make in the parliament make today are derived from thinking in English. With good communicators, there is still a lot of elegance in the resultant form of Hindi. That is what Farhan has done in Dil Chahta Hai, Lakshya, Rock On, Zindagi Na Milega Dobara and now Dil Dhadakne Do. His writing of conversation among urban youth is pot on and the best thing in these movies. People read books in English, they watch English movies and serials , so obviously the syntax of their thinking is deeply influenced by these.
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shrabonti
June 8, 2015
I agree with almost every word Utkal has written in his first, long comment. The film was much deeper, denser than ZNMD, and its observations of marriage and protocols within marriage were so spot-on my husband and I turned to look at each other spontaneously in the theatre quite a few times with a guilty, sheepish look on our faces. For eg, when Shefali tells AK someone dropped out from the cruise and he says ‘Achha hua, 8000 Euro bach gaye.’ Or when she berates him for taking money from Farhan, money he had leant him to get out of the way. There is just so much to like in the movie. Each frame was a delight. And people who feel that characters such as the intelligent, nerdy girl who keeps making fun of everyone were “underused” — well, the film was not about them and I’d rather have interested characters popping up everywhere than boring stereotypes.
This is not to say the film doesn’t have its flaws. The framing device of the dog is truly cringe-worthy. But everyone acts so well, everything is so tightly woven together, that I for one couldn’t look away. And it’s such an inherently progressive film — not just in its big ‘let the Mehra who knows business handle it’ moments — but in small moments such as the one where Ranvir turns up yet again to pester Anushka at her rehearsal and she snarls at him ‘This is my place of WORK. Just leave’. Or the subtle manifestations of tensions within the family, when early on, people who had decided not to bring it up talk about the invitation with the missing Mehra name just to score a point against the others. Pure gold, man. How can anyone not love the scene in the medical cabin after AK has had his health scare and the family are, finally, alone and have a mindblowing fight, with Ranvir turning around and telling his father — ‘Woh dancer hai, aur Mussulman hai.’ Note the choice of words, wanting to create maximum impact. I can watch the film all over again for that scene alone.
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sanjana
June 8, 2015
I felt that your review sounded more like cribbing.
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sanjana
June 8, 2015
I meant nitpicking and complaining. You must have expected something and disappointed.
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Gargi Mehra
June 8, 2015
Agree with your review. After watching movies like Piku and Tanu Weds Manu Returns (TWM2), it took me a while to adjust to the slow pace of this movie. Piku wasn’t fast, but the funny sharp dialogues came thick and fast, as did the banter in TWM2. Such snappy dialogues are few and far between here, but Ranveer Singh’s expressions are priceless.
The issues are cliché, but sadly still relevant in our society no matter how much we claim to have moved on and become modernized.
Also I don’t think movies should be 3 hours long anymore without a damn good reason. As olemisstarana mentioned earlier, Monsoon Wedding tackled far more serious subjects in a satisfying arc within a span of 2 hours.
Luck by Chance was an awesome movie, and I can’t wait for Zoya Akhtar to make another like it.
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Gargi Mehra
June 8, 2015
Please note that despite my surname my family is nothing like the Mehras in the film. We are a fully functional family, only occasionally dysfunctional.
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shrabonti
June 8, 2015
Oh, and I forgot to mention the best ‘this is marriage’ moment: When AK sidles up to Shefali and tries to give her some BS about how lucky he is, and she turns this frigid stare at him and says “why are you acting? we are alone”.
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AbhilashaChe
June 8, 2015
Contrary to the othons of a few in the comments, Mr.rangan is not trying to cram in witticisms for the heck of it. he’s a damn good writer and does not need to resort to mental masturbation. I loved haider as much as I loved Mr.rangan’s impassioned though masticatory review of the same.
however I feel that the line “tumhare iraade kya hai” more apt than “us ladki ke saath tum kya kar rage ho”. This movie is set in a Richie rich world where parents apparently do not freak out when they hear about their children having sex. nor do they care if their child is a friend with a person from the opposite sex. and in this particular movie the senior mehras have set up some sort of plan to make noorie and kabir like each other, yet not make it look staged. like they do want arranged marriage but do not want to admit. but a lot of middle class Indians treat pre marital sex as a taboo and dO Not like their children to have friends of the opposite sex. so in the situation in the movie,they want to know his intentions and a ” tum is ladki me saat kya..” Would not fit in the proceedings.
And I felt DDD was a shitty movie. shitty because,the akhtars here are behaving like they are pushing the boundaries of Indian cinema, but all they have done to DDD is to make a TV soap that is trying hard to look like some art-meets-mart vehicle. Mr.rangan mentioned in one of his reviews of how for every one step that farhan akhtar takes forward in his storytelling, he takes one step behind. but you cannot do this hopscotch without making a turd of a movie. Yes I agree that the ensemble cast here did a good job and the movie was visually appealing but the acting of an actor can never ever be bigger or better than the movie.
Mr.rangan told that he can only make meaningful analysis of a movie when he expects and owes to the director. inspite of the lhte syndrome that he has diagnosed in zoya’s films, he mentioned in the review of znmd that he finds her to be a good writer. would a good writer do that whole pluto voiceover shit, spoonfeeding us all the way like the audience has an iq of 60. it only makes it worse that its in aamir khan’s voice. Felt like satyameva jayate, not pluto mehra. i don’t come to watch a movie to hear people spout gyaan. the latter was surely the case with DDD.
the movie was directed with little or no honesty. like zoya does not believe in her abilities to tell a story her way and yet wants her movie to be a superhit. she went all way out to be a karan johar (family drama, visual aesthetics), a raju hirani (especially in the farhan akhtar-rahul Bose women empowerment scene) and a Farah khan (in the scene where ranveer imagines about him talking to his parents post noorie and his fictitious break up followed by a shot of kabir and Farah enjoying in a plane and the climax scene). basically, zoya did a classy formula film, liberally borrowing from the country’s most money spinning director. I am extremely grateful that zoya did not look up to madhur bhandarkar for inspiration.
I love zoya, but she has to learn a lot,from all her 3 films. If she wants inspiration, she should go the homi adajania way who, after his cocktail, went back to what he does best, making small budget Indian films in English. and she’s should work out of excel entertainment and have the courage, the honesty and most importantly, the humility to accept her shortcomings and make films HER way
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Anu Warrier
June 8, 2015
But written and directed superbly, with astounding nuance and energy — (the two needn’t be strangers). And a superb entertainer.
Rangan, I, for one, as a Malayali who lived and studied in Bangalore, and later, watched her classmates in college lust for Bangalore as this Mecca, cringed during many parts of Bangalore Days. Someone called it the <Karan Johar-isation of Malayalam cinema and I think that was just it. Plus, having lived in Bangalore and visited it quite frequently after, including quite recently, I was wondering which Bangalore she was portraying.
And honestly, I still cannot fathom a father asking Tum us ladki ke saath kya… when the pithy Tumhaare iraade kya hai?’ just fits so much better, and is short and snappy to boot.
But we must agree to disagree. 🙂
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Anu Warrier
June 8, 2015
@olemisstaraana I feel a little fraud-y after, as well and the husband is always gobsmacked at just how telugu I can be when I think no one but the bandhus are watching.
I first became conscious of my ‘change’ when my husband remarked on it. 🙂 But it is such an unconscious thing. Like my Hindi turning completely Punjabi-ised when I speak to a friend’s mother. (Like you, I consider myself a ‘native’ Hindi speaker, even if that is not my mother-tongue.)
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Utkal Mohanty
June 8, 2015
Anshu srivastava: Another gem of a scene was when Anil Kapoor tries to base compatibility measure upon they both being young, from same community and both playing tennis (Sqaush !)…. he is so dismissive about the whole issue. Probably he does not have the same with his own wife and so since his daughter and S-I-L have a little more frivolous things in common….. they become compatible in his books.
Even when Zarina Wahab asks PC “Shopping Nahi karvata kya mera beta”…. the way we materialize relations in society… I mean if the husband is taking wife out for dinner or shopping… then its a measure of a Happy marriage…. the expression on Zarina’s face is also awesome… sheer bewilderment…. how can u be unhappy with my son… he is not cheating on u and takes u shopping and that should be good enough for u ! The scene hits you with the reality of our society and the mindset problem.
Even the scene in while Rahul Bose says he “allows” his wife the freedom to run her business….. basking in the pride of being such a ‘liberal’ husband…. yet not realising how outdated his thinking actually is. The look on Priyanka’s face…. it conveys a lot. I have come across several such liberal husbands…. have heard this line very often “I have given total freedom to my wife to work post marriage”. The scene really makes you think that how far are we from reality and what we project and what we are.
the scene where Shefali says that she is afraid her husband would leave her and she sticks to him coz she has no where to go…. the scene where PC asks her family to support her more when she is taking the most difficult step of her life.
The above are the scenes which stood out for me…. there are many such subtle gems in the movie.
Zoya is a master of telling a lot in very little….. that’s what sets her apart from anyone else….. its almost as if she has witnessed this first hand ! The movie will fade away from memory but some of these scenes will stay with
me.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/moviebuffmembers/permalink/881734885201381/
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Oliver
June 8, 2015
“cha” is the right way to pronounce “sa” in tamizh. Just saying 🙂
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brangan
June 9, 2015
Okay, the alternative line I suggested may not be perfect, but I wasn’t saying this is exactly what the line should be. I was just saying I found her line odd and saying it could be along the lines of the one I suggested.
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Trodent
June 9, 2015
I tend to relate to most of BR’s reviews, but on this one, I am in the dissenting party. Having watched 3 recent flicks celebrating dysfunctional families with gusto (Piku, TWMR and DDD), I would rank this one as close second to Piku. If you take out the superb role/acting of Kangana, TWMR had a lot of holes and dragged a lot towards the end. Despite its 3 hours, I was entertained thruout DDD. Comparing this one to K3G and calling this inferior was really a low blow. While this one was continuously mocking artificiality of the lives of the super rich, K3G seemed to revel in it. In fact, the khushi and gam in K3G are so forced that it should have been titled Kabhi Saccharine Kabhi Glycerine.
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ThouShaltNot
June 9, 2015
So, the right way to “pronounce” Singeetham Srinivasa Rao in Tamizh would be Chingeetham Chrinivacha Rao? And Jayakanthan’s chef d’eouvre, to be right, would be “Chila Nerangalil Chila Manidhargal”? Makes one feel it’s right to be wrong in some instances 🙂
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js81615
June 9, 2015
Haven’t seen the film, but I find the discussion around language fascinating. The conundrum seems to be – should the Akhtars translate English dialogues and themselves i.e. their western sensibilities for a broader Hindustani public? And are they lesser artistes or less effective communicators because they are alienated from a vernacular (Hindustani) idiom? I am afraid Brangan, I am with those who disagree with you on this one. Cinema, IMO, is a product of multiple translations (from technology to dialogues). Any desire for authenticity is at best romantic, at worst puritanical.
The conversation around the dialogues reminded me of Talaash. Farhan Akhtar penned the dialogues for that film too. I don’t remember the dialogues, but did you find them affected too?
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rothrocks
June 9, 2015
I don’t find anything wrong with tumhare iraade kya hai but the larger point on LHHE is valid. This is not about puritanism. I have never ever heard anybody in real life actually say,”Main samajh raha hoon tum kahan se aa rahe ho.” Because the English “I know where you’re coming from” is an idiomatic expression; it’s not pure English. Obviously it’s going to sound clumsy if you simply transpose it in Hindi because both languages have different cultural moorings. I am all for cinema embracing colloquialisms that may be sneered at by purists but the above is not even a colloquialism, not in Mumbai where the Hindi is pretty dire anyway, and while I am no Hindi scholar I seriously doubt whether it exists at all in Hindi.
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Rahul
June 9, 2015
js81615 , check BR’s review of Talaash. In my comment there I have indicated one –
I wont bite has been literally translated to mai katoongi nahi. It should have been mai kha nahi jaoongi. Its a game I play with my girlfriend – who can spot more akhtarisms.
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MANK
June 9, 2015
Anu warrier, how could you take Bangalore days and karan johar in the same sentence is beyond me. film viewing is a subjective thing and you have the right to like or dislike a film
BD as a film is not perfect, and it does show a glamorised version of bangalore – after all its cinema – but as a film its a subtle, nuanced and organically created work and exact opposite of a KJ film IMHO
Speaking of KJisation of Malayalam cinema, that has already happened 10 or15 years ago with a spate of kunchacko boban films like niram, aniyathipravu and so on
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brangan
June 9, 2015
shrabonti: I quite agree with you about the “small moments” bit. I have mentioned my favourite one in the review:
There’s a great scene where she pushes Manav away in bed and then feels sorry (or guilty; or maybe both) and reaches out to him again.
My problem is that…
These terrific shadings deserve a life-size portrait. We get a picture postcard.
These small moments were not enough for me to overlook the fact that…
Every problem is a cliché. Every outcome is preordained. And there are too many characters with too little to do.
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Irfan Syed
June 9, 2015
Knew it be disappointing. And it seems, it hasn’t disappointed in that.
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Iswarya
June 9, 2015
rothrocks: Even for someone like me whose Hindi knowledge is far too small to be even considered functional, that line sounds weird. In fact, it reminded me of the occasions when I have translated English idioms into Tamil hoping people would somehow ‘get’ it. The most awkward one, for instance, was “Avan en thalaiya thinnuduvaan…” for “He’ll bite my head off.” I remember how my grandma to whom I said this was totally flummoxed by the statement. 😀
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Utkal Mohanty
June 10, 2015
Cliché: Hackneyed, Made trite with overuse.
Which of the problems dealt in the film have been overused?
The main problems at the core of the films are the problems faced by the brother and sister, Ranveer and Priyanka.
Priyanka’s problem: She wants a divorce from her husband because she thinks they are not compatible. She knows this will embarrass the family and hurt her parents but she can’t stand the idea of a loveless marriage. In how many films have we seen this before? ( As far as I can remember only in KANK.)
Ranveer’s problem: He thinks he has no flair for business. But he likes flying and does not want the family aeroplane to be sold. Even if we attenuate the problem and transpose the plane toa car or something…in which film have we seen this dilemma. None that I can remember.
Ranveer and Priyanka’s problem: Though the sister has the better business acumen, no one is considering the option of her running the family business. In which film have we seen this? None that I can think of.
Preordained outcome?
If I remember the film correctly, none of the above problems have really been solved at the end of the film.
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Anu Warrier
June 10, 2015
MANK, grinning totally unrepentantly The Bangalore in Bangalore Days was so aseptic, so swept clean of everything that makes the city what it is. That is what I meant by Karan Joharisation. Like his Chandni Chowk in K3G.
I don’t know what it is about Anjali Menon’s films that makes me shy away; for instance, I liked parts of Ustad Hotel and hated the others, but a friend refers to the movie as 4 Hollywood films and a NDTV documentary ; everyone raved about Manjadikkuru and coming from that background, I found the very basis of some of the characters’ actions very unbelievable. And you know my opinion of Bangalore Days.
Her movies are decent. More than that, I will not commit myself. 🙂
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Anu Warrier
June 10, 2015
p.s. I didn’t find the characters in BD nuanced or subtle, I’m afraid. In fact, I found Kalpana’s character so over-the-top that I wanted to reach out and shake her!
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Ruchi
June 10, 2015
You hit the bulls eye with this review Mr. Rangan! There is a complete absence of life in this party of good looking people. I should have seen the “Making of Dil Dhadakne Do” instead of the actual movie! Sounds like,it was a lot more fun…
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rothrocks
June 10, 2015
Iswarya: Exactly and notice how the casual flavour of the English idiom becomes so clunky when translated in Tamil. The example cited above by Rahul (“main kaatungi nahi” 😀 ) is also classic. It’s even worse because you already have a matching expression in Hindi but the Akhtar/Katgi are presumably so disconnected from mainstream Hindi that they forgot about it and laboriously worked out a literal translation of the English example.
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Utkal
June 10, 2015
The new-age directors reflect the new India. Hinglish and translated-from-English Hindi is what today’s urban Indians speak….right from politicians to film stars to writers to ordinary folks. It is the old Hind that si outdated just like the Sanskritized Doordarshan Hindi got outdated a long time ago. And that is how a language gets a new skin every few decades.
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MANK
June 10, 2015
Brangan, I cannot believe that javed akthar – whos pretty much the father of hindi film dialogue – has never noticed this contradiction in his children’s films and have not pointed it out to them. I wonder whether they are doing this intentionally
As some sort of representative version of actual dialogue, you know so they could connect with average Hindi film audience even while keeping the aesthetic of the real nature/class of these characters. these films are made on a much bigger scale than lunchbox or finding fanny you know. so its necessary that they connect with a wider audience than just the sophisticated multiplex audience
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Prasad
June 10, 2015
Utkal
“Zoya is a master of telling a lot in very little….. that’s what sets her apart from anyone else….”
Haven’t seen the movie, planning to catch up this week. But based on the some of the comments you have mentioned, looks like Indian audience have not seen a movie like this before! But do you really think, it is that good? How do rate Zoya comparing with, Sriram Raghavan, Shoojit or say Vikramaditya Motwane or Dibaker? Is there any huge risks she has taken in Story telling for DD (Like Piku or Vicky Donor) or does it has terrific one liners/Performances like TWMR? At least based on her past movies. I didn’t see her in that zone other making exclusive movies for Urban Audience.
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Rahul
June 10, 2015
Utkal, can you give a few examples of how today’s urban Indians are speaking, with respect to this particular case, as in, expressions literally translated from English. I am not sure I have noticed this, though admittedly my interaction with the aforementioned demographic is limited to few weeks in the year.
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Ravi K
June 10, 2015
Do people who don’t know English even watch these ? If this film was made in the kind of English the characters would speak, would it lose much of the audience?
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Saurabh
June 10, 2015
Utkal,
I think Brangan has mentioned what he found cliched
a) This is essentially an update of a 1960s family melodrama. It’s all here – the line about how, after marriage, beti parayi ho gayi; the concern over log kya kahenge when they hear about a divorce; the mangni toot gayi tragedy; a father’s expectation that his daughter should gift him a grandson; the rich girl falling in love with her father’s manager ka beta… These tropes are refracted through a soap-opera prism, and staged with an emphasis on setting and character that those older films did not bother too much with.
b) Son wants to step out of domineering dad’s shadow, daughter wants to end an unhappy marriage, and so forth.
I will add my list of things:
All the characters are one-dimensional and are basically a representation of a certain idea (stereotypes) — All aunts are bitchy/gossipy and there is nothing that makes them unique individual. Farhan Akhtar is an ideal guy (“modern” views and all), is there anything else to his character? Rahul Bose is a typical representation of a certain idea. Nothing much to his character either. Same with Anushka Sharma’s character (a woman who follows her passion and stands up to her beliefs)
Its not that, these traits are not present in people. However, first of all, we have seen these “types/people” so many times before in Hindi cinema. And also, watching one-dimensional people (no layers to their personality) is just plain boring because once you know what “type” they are, there is not much to look forward to in terms of their behavior and responses in a given situation.
Take for example the scene between Farhan Akhtar and Rahul Bose at the party where Rahul Bose says something like “I allowed her to work”. I mean if we think from the perspective of Rahul Bose’s character (remember he is not from the generation of Anil Kapoor but from the generation of Farhan etc), even if he beliefs in what he said, he would probably know that this kind of idea is looked down upon in today’s society and would not spell it out like the way he did (exposing himself to ridicule). It was such a lazy (preachy) execution of the scene. I would have liked it more if this whole idea was done in a more subtle way.
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Madan
June 11, 2015
Rahul: I play with college going guys every day during my tennis sessions and I have never heard anybody use “main kaatungi/kaatunga nahi” or “mujhe maalum hai aap kahan se aa rahe ho.” Maybe South Mumbai elite types might but I have my doubts; they are either fluent in Hindi or so terrible at it that they wouldn’t even try their luck translating American/British idioms into Hindi. People who are terrible in Hindi wouldn’t try their hand at translation and people who are good at it would usually pick homegrown idioms because they are still commonly used in everyday conversation and the notion that they aren’t anymore and are ‘outdated’ is quite perplexing to me.
It may vary from city to city, of course, but I have a hard time believing teenagers/adolescents in North India would be more disconnected from accepted Hindi than those in Mumbai. Maybe this happens in Bangalore (and that’s just a shot in the dark, no slight intended there) but then, if that is the case, is Bangalore really representative of contemporary Hindi culture?
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KayKay
June 11, 2015
RIP Count Dracula/ Francisco Scaramanga/ Count Dooku/ Saruman The White
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donna
June 11, 2015
Great review! I’ve never liked Hrithik except for Luck By Chance (such a good movie, such a great score, what has happened to S-E-L?) where I imagined that he was playing himself. thank you!
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venkatesh
June 11, 2015
The best comment award of this blog post goes to : Shrabonti
“I agree with almost every word Utkal has written in his first, long comment.”
First, Long Comment. 🙂
Shrabonti : Welcome to the blog.
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MANK
June 11, 2015
Venkatesh, dude that was ROFL. As you see ignorance can be bliss
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Anu Warrier
June 11, 2015
even if he beliefs in what he said, he would probably know that this kind of idea is looked down upon in today’s society and would not spell it out like the way he did
Saurabh, you’d be surprised at just how many men would not think twice about making that remark. In public. Aloud.
Or how many women, even today, believe that it is their duty to take care of the home and hearth.
Unfortunately, the beti parayi ho gayi trope is well and truly alive, as is the expectation that a woman should get pregnant after marriage – soon, and ideally give birth to a son. (And never the matter that she has no control over that.) All those tropes still exist – divorce is still looked down upon, a divorcee is slandered (much more so than a man) and treated as if she is fair game by men, and as if she is a predator of their men by the women, engagements breaking off still hold a stigma (again for the girl) and so on and so forth. I won’t get into how the film treats these tropes since I haven’t watched it yet, but these tropes and many others (regressive though they are) still flourish in our society, even among the elite.
@Madan, I agree with you. The young people I know switch effortlessly from HIndi to English and back, and use homegrown idioms with both languages. I haven’t heard anyone translate an English idiom directly into Hindi, ever. Other than as a joke. But yes, many of them (us?) tend to think in English, speak in English even, but with a patois that we’ve made our own.
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Utkal
June 12, 2015
SAurabh: “Son wants to step out of domineering dad’s shadow, daughter wants to end an unhappy marriage, and so forth.”
I want you to mention ONE film from the 60’s where a daughter wants to break a marriage because she and her husband are incompatible. And ONE film where a son wants to step out of a dad’s domineering shadow but wants to keep his dad’s plane. If some critics do not want to see subtleties and see the film on auto-pilot instead of for what it is that cannot be Zoya’s problem.That’s why when it comes to mainstream films I trust the general audience more than critics while view films with a preordained template in mind.
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Utkal
June 12, 2015
I hear a lot about it being an update of 1960’s melodrama. If so, it would be updating something that was done 50 years back and that wont be such a bad thing. Though I doubt anyone can name one 1960s film they are talking about. I tried to roll in mind the family dramas that I can remember of from 1960s till today…Ghar ghar ki kahani, Do raashte, HAHK, Sum Saath ssath Hain, K3G…..honestly when I think of these films and DDD, I can only think of chalk and cheese. I think saying K3G and DDD are similar because they are both family films is like saying a cow and a tiger similar because they both have four legs.
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MANK
June 12, 2015
Utkal,how about guide, or even sahib Bibi aur gulam. of course they didn’t use terms like incompatibility. And some aiyashiness is added to the husband character just so that the film would get past the censors.but those films showed women walking out of unhappy marriages to live with other men
As for sons moving out of the father’s \familys shadow, that was the staple of even the shammi kapoor romcoms from junglee, prince and rajkumar ….not forget the greatest of them all- mughal-e-azam where the son wanted to keep not only his father’s plane but also his empire
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sanjana
June 12, 2015
Guide and SBG. The husbands there were either old or philanderers. In DDD, the husband is a good man and some other woman wont find it hard to live with him. He may say politically incorrect things but it can be tolerated as a give and take. Is he not tolerating her inspite of secretly knowing what she thinks about him?
I agree with Utkal when he says that, ‘That’s why when it comes to mainstream films I trust the general audience more than critics while view films with a preordained template in mind.’
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sanjana
June 12, 2015
As Anu Warrier says, perfectly civilised men also blurt out these things. In their minds they feel that they are honest and not hypocrites.
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sanjana
June 12, 2015
Was not Brangan himself was in big trouble when he said that OKK was for certain type of audience?
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Srinivas R
June 12, 2015
“Guide and SBG. The husbands there were either old or philanderers. In DDD, the husband is a good man and some other woman wont find it hard to live with him. He may say politically incorrect things but it can be tolerated as a give and take. Is he not tolerating her inspite of secretly knowing what she thinks about him?”
I guess this is precisely the reason , why it is an update of the earlier themes. It’s not necessary that the Husband has to be flawed. It is enough if the lady is unhappy. Just because he’ll find another woman suitable for him , doesn’t mean he is the right guy for his wife. So in 1960s , the wife was unhappy because her husband was old or a philanderer, in today’s time it’s enough if he’s a passive aggressive chauvinist, who the wife is tolerating for the sake of keeping up appearances.
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brangan
June 12, 2015
Saurabh: Take for example the scene between Farhan Akhtar and Rahul Bose…
I was shocked by how the scene began. It was so clunky and graceless, and the Reema/Zoya do grace really well — so I was really shocked by how randomly and un-subtly Rahul brought up the topic, just so that Farhan could become Galahad and charge to Priyanka’s rescue. Thereon, the equations are so preordained.
I understand that there were so many characters that it wasn’t possible to do things slowly, but here it’s all in fast-forward mode and I found the “entry” into the scene ridiculous. Another bad “entry” was the one in which Priyanka gets frustrated with the aunties and charges into Farhan’s room.
Surely they could have dreamed up a better entry point for the scene?
Utkal: In some earlier comment, you said Dhoom 3 reminded you of Dostoevsky. In that light, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched finding K3G and DDD similar in that both are a “multi-starrer about a dysfunctional upper-crust family.”
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sanjana
June 12, 2015
The film’s message is not clear. That the elder Mehra is easily excused, Manav is thrown out in the sea. Divorce is not for the older couples and its for younger ones. Is it because Neelam Mehra is incapable of leading a separate life and she is incapable of eeking out a living? Or she loves her husband unlike her daughter. If the daughter also loved her husband, she would not have gone for divorce even after the incident. Is this the message?
Nothing that was shown in the movie was new or pathbreaking. As I said earlier in some other thread, there are only so many stories and so many situations and the only difference is how they are shown.
Old wine in new bottle.
That is why a Piku stands out. A fresh subject.
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Madan
June 13, 2015
Whoa, Utkal did what? Ah, the wonders of post modernism! Guess anything can be given a meta-interpretation these days.
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Saurabh
June 13, 2015
Anu: I agree, all these tropes are still alive (and kicking). However, my problem is not with raising these tropes in a film but rather integrating them in the story/screenplay in a seamless (subtle/meaningful/graceful) way. As Brangan aptly put it, the “entry” into the scene and the way it played out was random, clunky, graceless and unsubtle.
Sanjana: “In DDD, the husband is a good man” … Careful, what you say 🙂 . On a serious note, I think the director clearly intends to portray him in a negative light (and that is one of the problems I have, that the director robs this character of his dignity by portraying him in a stereotypical way). During Guide and SBG era, a bad marriage was where the husband was old or philanderer (in fact if you were married to a guy like Bose’s character who would “allow” you to work, that would have been considered quite progressive in those times. So much for absolute “truths” and “rights” and “wrongs” ) whereas in today’s time a bad marriage is apparently to be married to a guy like Bose’s character. But the key point is that the intention behind the portrayal of this kind of character (Rahul Bose’s) is not very different from Guide and SBG.
Utkal: “And ONE film where a son wants to step out of a dad’s domineering shadow but wants to keep his dad’s plane” …. Well, “keep his dad’s plane” is definitely brand new :). But I see what you are trying to say, that the issues are still valid and the movie does try to update the people and situation in sync with today’s times. Now, the fact that people and situations and issues haven’t changed much does not give the director much breathing space. And this should not be a deterrent in enjoying the movie.
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Manu Moudgil
June 13, 2015
I watched the movie yesterday and came back looking for your review since I don’t like to read such insights before watching a movie. I must say you nailed it quite well.
“…with Akhtar directing with a finger on the fast-forward button, there’s nothing and no one to care about. Yes, this is a light film and not really a drama, but it’s so airless that even the screwball bits…don’t get a chance to breathe.”
That sums it up.
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Anu Warrier
June 13, 2015
Saurabh, true. That is why I said I hadn’t watched the film and so could not say how it was interpreted in the film. 🙂 I agree with you.
Utkal, back in the 80s, there was a movie called Vijeta where the son wants to do something different from the life plans that his father has chalked out. Offhand, that is the one I can remember. I’m sure there were others. Ah, yes, Rehman in the Shammi Kapoor starrer, Jaanwar.
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pankaj1905
June 15, 2015
Since we are talking of Zoya Akhtar, there is so much to observe in her films. Not yet seen DDD, but there is a repeating motif in all her films. In Luck By Chance, there is the metaphor of birds. So many scenes had birds. Sona’s apartment is full of birds. The entire shelf contains birds.. pigeons, parrots. At one point, Vikram comes and picks up the bird that had fallen off. Vikram is wearing a shirt that has a bird. And that too, it is two-colored – purple and white. I think the birds are referring to the ambitions of both Vikram and Sona, that they want to become big stars. They want to reach the sky and fly high like the birds do. To reach the top, Vikram who is a two-faced person will do anything to get there. That is why he picked up the bird that was also bi-colored. That is why he wears a shirt that has a bird that is bi-colored. Similarly, each scene in the film had a flower with it, yes, every scene in Luck By Chance had a flower. The same flower pattern was repeated in Bombay Talkies in Zoya’s story, and in Talaash, too. From what I see in trailer of DDD, it seems to be case in it as well. Will be watching it soon to see if there are new motifs in the film. More fascinating details on LBC here. Sorry for the plug 🙂
http://dichotomy-of-irony.blogspot.in/2013/11/of-fascinating-details-in-luck-by-chance.html
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brangan
June 15, 2015
pankaj1905: Excellent comment, thanks. Look forward to your discovery of DDD’s symbol soon ☺
I really think Zoya is a very good director. I wrote somewhere that she’s a “thoughtful miniaturist.” It’s frustrating to see her expend her talents on such broad material.
Also, a fun question. How many films have the same letters repeated in their acronyms? There’s DDD, SSS (Satyam Shivam Sundaram), KKK (Khiladiyon Ke Khiladi), AAA (Andaz Apna Apna)…
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Rahul
June 15, 2015
Pankaj , your blog is a veritable treasure trove. Thank you for sharing. I would be interested to know , which writers on film do you like.
BR, I see that you are not acquainted with Arjun Hingorani.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0385758/
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pankaj1905
June 16, 2015
When I started thinking on this, I ran into the same word as well, such as Aamir-starrer ‘Love Love Love’. And, I Hate Luv Storys had a meta movie that Sameer Soni directed in it called ‘Pyar Pyar Pyar’.
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JC
June 16, 2015
BR: There’s also Amar Akbar Anthony, Chori Chori Chupke Chupke and Go Goa Gone…
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pankaj1905
June 17, 2015
I finally got to watch it, and really, really, liked it a lot. I felt many similarities to Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu. A dysfunctional family, son who is not good falls in love with a dancer. 1. Besides the flower motif which is present in this film as well, there is an animal motif here.The film begins with the black and white pictures of various animals, such as giraffes, zebras, elephants, tigers, chimpanzees, and lions. It makes the point that humans keep changing themselves, that they start to resemble more like chameleons. Then, he makes a statement on the wives of Sood and Khanna that although they might be smiling but they would rather bite each other off like animals. Funnily, both of these ladies carry a leopard print bag. Later, when Jamaal Uncle says that Ayesha appeared on the list of top entrepreneurs, Kamal replies next year Kabir will be there as he is a tiger. At another instance, Manav says to Ayesha that he heard Lalit Sood is investing in Ayka, and then, remarks that Lalit Sood is a vulture, and her dad is a hawk. And, then, when Farah and Kabir see each other for the first time, Pluto remarks that, “Shuru me hum jaanwaron me bhi aisa hi khel hota hai.” Later, we see a bird tattoo on Farah when the song Pehli Baar ends. At another instance, in the scene, where all of them are having fun on the deck, and Divya pukes, there is again an animal reference. Manav asks them to look to at the constellation Centaurus and then says that is “half man, and half horse; Ptolemy ne discover kiya tha.” A few more. 2. Istanbul a place located on two continents referred to the two clashing cultures, a city located on the cusp of two continents, a family on the cusp. Just managed to finish writing here.
Full details here 🙂
http://dichotomy-of-irony.blogspot.com/2015/06/dil-dhadakne-do-let-heart-beat.html
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sanjana
June 17, 2015
Some see birds, Some see dry paint, Some see dogs. Some see cardiologists.
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Anuj
June 17, 2015
DDD is a boring, caricatured and stereotyped depiction of wealthy people on a wealthy cruise trying to solve personal issues which need to be sorted out in the comforts of their living rooms with a bit more patience and an ability to sacrifice (which no character in a Zoya Akhtar movie ever posseses). Read my review on :
http://thesimplemoviereviewer.blogspot.in/2015/06/dil-dhadakne-do-reinstating-stereotypes.html
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Anuj
June 18, 2015
Oops… i guess the 2 thumbs down came from Utkal & Satyamshot fanboys who just like listening to their own voices!
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Rahini David
June 19, 2015
Isn’t it weird how much a couple of thumbs down affects some people? I mean so what if a couple of perfect strangers do not like what we have to say?
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Anuj
June 19, 2015
For all the hype and positive reactions surrounding it, this movie has still underperformed and just about saved itself from flopping at the box office. The final collections will not even be at par with ZNMD despite the fact that ZNMD came 4 years ago when multiplex ticket prices were 40% lower than what they are today. Even among the premium multiplexes of metros, DDD is a rejected movie. And rightly so. Food for thought for the Akhtars to stop boring us with their candy floss garbage. Piku continues to remain the undisputed classic when it comes to urban middle class family dramas and film-makers like the Akhtar siblings and Reema Kagti would do well to take a cue from it.
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Abhirup
June 19, 2015
I finally saw this. It is every bit as terrible as ZNMD.
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olemisstarana
June 19, 2015
“When rich people go on holiday and solve their problems.”
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Madan
June 21, 2015
Everyone is free to have their opinions but calling DCH a mediocre film is a bit much. Of course in the internet we all love to pretend that anything we don’t like is low quality whereas any opinion on ‘quality ‘ideally ought to flow from a detached assessment of technical parameters. DCH was fluff, sure, but fluff of a different kind. It was very different from anything else in Bollywood at the time. Not just the ultra-posh settings but the casual and urbane tone as well as irreverence for extant societal norms (Askhaye Khanne-Dimple angle) and even the music (albeit basically a clever assortment of best-of-ARR moments) was all very different from run-of-the-mill Bollywood. And it was also a whole lot better than the tacky, cliched masala films on offer at the time. That may not be saying a whole lot, but hey it’s Bollywood. Taking a risk with a different approach is very much appreciated the first time around; repeating it and making a formula out of it is entirely another matter, yes.
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Anuj
June 22, 2015
When you make a film with as limited a target audience as ZNMD or DDD, its important for the film to have a 70%+ word of mouth among that limited target audience for it to perform well at the box office & have a good theatrical run. Both ZNMD and DDD are mainly catering to the audiences frequenting the high end premium multiplexes of metropolitan & semi-metropolitan cities. ZNMD had an 80%+ word of mouth among the multiplex audiences of metros and hence ran for weeks together in the high end multiplexes of metropolitan cities thereby collecting 90cr+ in 2011 (would be around 130cr in today’s times if adjusted for ticket prices) and thereby became a HIT. DDD unfortunately has carried just a 50% word of mouth among the audiences of these very multiplexes and hence will end up with just about an 80cr lifetime figure thereby just about saving itself from becoming a FLOP. Its evident that this formula of mushy films shot in exotic locations and portraying the lives of ultra rich urban Indians is well past its sell by date.
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Srinivas R
June 22, 2015
Seconding Madan on DCH, I also think it wasn’t afraid to get dramatic when required, the Tanhayee song and the moment when Amir Khan breaks down after calling Akshay by mistake, made me feel for the characters. The problem with the formulaic approach is there’s nothing at stake
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Utkal
June 23, 2015
BR:” In some earlier comment, you said Dhoom 3 reminded you of Dostoevsky. In that light, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched finding K3G and DDD similar in that both are a “multi-starrer about a dysfunctional upper-crust family.””
Well, I only talked of the cat-and-mouse going on between Abhishek and Aamir in D3 reminding of the similar intercation between the policeman Porifiry Petrovitch and Raskolnikov, because of the complex dynamics in their relationship. Another beautiful moment in D3 was when Samar who was confined all this while goes out in the open and feels the touch of wind on his face as he rides the bus. It is moments like these in mainstream big films that makes it one’s worthwhile to sit through hours of crap. As to K3G and DDD , one can talk of the two in the same breath, yes, but only to point the opposite polarity of perspective in parent-children relationship that the two films present. A son accusing his father of philandering on his business trips and pointing out to his mother that she stayed on with her husband only because she had nowhere else to go, and the film implying that both these assertions are true, would make the director of K3G die from shock.
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brangan
June 23, 2015
Utkal: So that is all I am saying. Just like you only talked about one aspect that reminded you of Dostoevsky, I am only pointing out the superficial similarities between K3G and DDD.
When Karan Johar made a similar multi-starrer about a dysfunctional upper-crust family, he infused the proceedings with deliciously vulgar energy.
Both are multi-starrers. Both have dysfunctional stuff. Both have upper-crust families.
I did exactly what you did with your comparison. Whereas in the comment above, you seem to have thought I think DDD is pretty much the same as K3G.
Was just pointing that out.
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Utkal
June 25, 2015
And talking of Translated or transliterated dialogue , this intro from Murakami’s latest novel can be instructive.
‘Having discovered the curious effect of composing in a foreign language, thereby acquiring a creative rhythm distinctly my own, I returned my Olivetti to the closet and once more pulled out my sheaf of manuscript paper and my fountain pen. Then I sat down and “translated” the chapter or so that I had written in English into Japanese. Well, “transplanted” might be more accurate, since it wasn’t a direct verbatim translation. In the process, inevitably, a new style of Japanese emerged. The style that would be mine. A style I myself had discovered. Now I get it, I thought. This is how I should be doing it. It was a moment of true clarity, when the scales fell from my eyes.
Some people have said, “Your work has the feel of translation.” The precise meaning of that statement escapes me, but I think it hits the mark in one way, and entirely misses it in another. Since the opening passages of my first novella were, quite literally, “translated,” the comment is not entirely wrong; yet it applies merely to the process of writing. What I was seeking by writing first in English and then “translating” into Japanese was no less than the creation of an unadorned “neutral” style that would allow me freer movement. My interest was not in creating a watered-down form of Japanese. I wanted to deploy a type of Japanese as far removed as possible from so-called literary language in order to write in my own natural voice. That required desperate measures. I would go so far as to say that, at that time, I may have regarded Japanese as no more than a functional tool.’
http://lithub.com/haruki-murakami-the-moment-i-became-a-novelist/
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kans345
July 10, 2015
What the hell happened to the director who made Luck by chance, or was her first movie ghost directed by someone else. At least I didn’t feel so after having watched some of her interviews after LBC.
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Arun
July 10, 2015
I must confess here that I did not like ZNMD. I was said that ZNMD is a great emotional cum travel film. While the travel parts were beautiful like the Spain tomatino episodes or the water diving episode of Hrithik…but where the film slipped badly was the emotional core. Like when the guys are confronted by Kalki’s character regarding their long absence and why do they have friendship with Katrina’s character..I found myself identifying with Kalki’s character. After this I switched off the TV.
Then later I watched the new Agnipath starring HR. And that was fabulous compared to ZNMD. HR was perfect as the angry young man…he was able to portray a range of expressions perfectly ranging from anger, joy, pain. The scene while he meets his long lost sister…he nearly tears up and I found myself tearing up as well. Agnipath was perhaps wrongly labeled as sterotypical HINDI FILM… It was much more than that.
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Janani Kalyanam
March 29, 2016
PC and Ranveer play siblings in Dil Dhadakne Do. Their chemistry is spot on.
Just a few months later, we see them as husband-and-wife in Bajirao.
Pretty incestuous. Kudos to the actos(?) that no one even realized it?
I don’t know of many (or any?) lead pairs who have also played siblings, and that too, fairly successfully in both.
Don’t tell me: SRK and ASH in Josh and Devdas — blleechhh 🙂
I am sure there are many more in Tamizh. With Kamal Hassan and Srividhya e.t.c.
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sahiravik
June 23, 2018
I’m going to be slightly mean and leave a comment three years later saying… “Hermès” is a French word, so the H is silent, which means it should be “AN Hermès bag”. Hahaha.
As for the film, I disagree with so much of what you said, but can also see why you said it, so I won’t say much.
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ravenus1
April 7, 2020
Watched the film last night, and in general I liked it more than you seem to have done. The acting is mostly of a high standard (Priyanka and Ranveer rock, and Anil Kapoor gives an acting masterclass that should convince his own progeny to find other career avenues), and even in their super-richness, the characters are more relatable than the typical Karan Johar cast.
Some added random thoughts:
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