Dil To Baccha Hai Ji (DTBHJ) isn’t a typical ‘Madhur Bhandarkar’ film. No, it’s not bereft of cardboard cutouts masquerading as characters, insensitive portrayals, cheap jokes or jarring background score threatening to tear your eardrums every time something dramatic needs to conveyed; DTBHJ is a full loaded Bhandarkar film and yet it’s different for finally we have a Madhur Bhandarkar film that will not win any National Award!
Following its tagline ‘Love Grows, Men Don’t’ DTBHJ is about three men who believe they have found the love of their boring lives but as life isn’t a bed of roses our boys will learn that true love will come their way but only at the end of the film. In his late 30’s and recently divorced, Naren (Ajay Devgn) shifts back into his parents’ house and takes up paying guests in the form of Abhay or Aby (Emraan Hashmi), a local Lothario of a gym instructor who beds everything that moves and Milind (Omi Vaidya), a proud virgin who believes in saving himself for that one perfect woman and that one perfect night. The tiresome threesome end up meeting the objects of their affection- a young secretary, June Pinto (Shazahn Padamsee), a trophy wife Anushka Narang (Tisca Chopra, ravishing!) and an RJ who desperately wants to become actor Gungun (Shraddha Das) and go through the motions of love. Naren tries hard to fit into the 22 year old June’s friend circle, Aby gets goodies from sugar mama Anushka but ends up falling for her step-daughter Nikki (Shruti Hassan) and Milind is only too happy to run to the cleaners as Gungun uses him for everything from getting drinks in a pub to getting a new portfolio clicked. After much deliberation the three inch closer to winning over their women but things don’t go as planned and in the end the three are left high and dry only to bump into the real ‘true’ loves of their lives.
DTBHJ ushers in a Bandarkar v 2.0 simply because this isn’t a dreary tale that the multi National Award winning director has been long associated with. This is a bright and happy film and thanks to Priya Suhas’s decent production design and Ravi Walia’s neat camerawork DTBHJ even manages to look up-market. And yet DTBHJ is as tacky as most Bhandarkar films end up being.
Replete with crude jokes about homosexuality, aging, caricatured portrayals of just about everyone and insensitive things like a stray dog named Kasab as the mutt was found at VT Station and is a terror, DTBHJ might be funny at places but on the whole is rather tasteless. Like most Bhandarkar films DTBHJ features a characters as flat as a three day old cola, shoddy writing with loads of expository dialogues that contain the entire story of some other film and rather strange characterizations- a Radio Jockey whose broke as hell, a business tycoon who looks like a lost child, a Goan granny who talks like some cheap gangster, etc.
Many actors believe that a role in a Madhur Bhandarkar film suddenly puts you in a different league and while this isn’t a ‘typical’ Bhandarkar film no one takes their job seriously. Don’t blame them for how different can you play a Hindi film playboy or how challenging can it be to play a business tycoon who mouths inanities like ‘ There’s an economic forum in Geneva….we must go there together….we all will go, great we will go next week’ without even bothering to make the obligatory ‘dramatic’ pauses? Devgn puts in a decent effort and at places he’s even fun to watch but Hashmi, a victim of his own ‘serial kisser’ image looks like a buffoon rolling his eyes and smiling his impish smile. Omi Vaidya’s strange accent was perhaps fun in 3 Idiots but here it’s annoying and so is the poor poetry he bores us with. Even if Bhandarkar reserves his most insensitive jokes for women in his films, they always have a bigger presence in them but here barring Tisca Chopra, who looks better than everyone else put together, no one else makes a mark. Das is shabby but Padamsee and Hassan are passable. As far as acting goes my pick of the ladies was Naren’s lady lawyer- a character called Sunanda Pradhan; hilarious to say the least.
Bhandarkar wastes much of the screen time with absolutely mindless actions and half-way into the film just as you think what the hell is DTBHJ all about he introduces Nikki and makes Aby fall for her in a desperate bid to infuse some semblance of a story. Towards the end Bhandarkar rather conveniently just sums up everything as if he’s on speed mode or maybe the release date of the film was staring him in the face. There are some amusing moments and DTBHJ might be Bhandarkar’s idea of a fun film but you know sometimes the twain just don’t meet.
Rating: 2/5
Cast: Ajay Devgn, Emraan Hashmi, Omi Vaidya, Shruti Hassan, Sharaddha Das, Shazahn Padamsee and Tisca Chopra
Written by: Madhur Bhandarkar, Neeraj Udhwani and Anil Pandey
Directed by: Madhur Bhandarkar
Image: www.isongz.com
2 comments:
Hello Gautam, I really enjoyed your review even though I seem to have not HATED the film the way you did - I didn't like it either, but that's another story. :) I have a question for you though: you write, "Even if Bhandarkar reserves his most insensitive jokes for women in his films, they always have a bigger presence in them". Why do you say that? I consider myself super-fussy about such matters, so am curious. Do tell :) BTW your review made me laugh and I'm smiling even as I write this comment. :)
While watching a Madhur Bhandarkar film one gets a feeling that he has already judged his characters in advance. The idea of the viewer looking at a character and forming an opinion as the story unfolds perhaps doesn't exist or isn't possible in a Bhandarkar film. His characters are more black and white than a shade card- the cops are corrupt, the politician is a spineless entity, the poor have a heart of gold, the prostitute is at the end of the day a nice person forced into a corner, etc.
In this context no matter how nice he wants a 'bad' character to look 'good' or make you feel something that might not exist so that later when the open secret is out you'd have a greater reaction...you know that he's already formed an opinion. Now in this context you look at Anushka Narang in the film- he wants us to think that she is past her 'sell-by' date (not the words I'd use to describe a character even if fictitious) but that's the perception everyone gives about her in the film. Bhandarkar wants us to believe that she's a nice person but in a society where age is a huge factor to judge beautiful women, Narang's now an old timer and keeping that in mind his reserves the biggest digs for her. Her own step-daughter is rude to her even though there's no real reason for Nikki to behave the way she does with Anushka.
Or for that matter take Gungun. She's a conniving person and we know this from the time Milind goes to the radio station. Even before she can say 'I don't care two hoots for such losers who happen to be my fans' we know she's 'that' kind of a person. Yet every time she comes on screen Bhandarkar makes her act as is she is the worst person on the planet. Then somewhere he tries to make her look good but does it come as a shock when she flies the coop at the eleventh hour? If she would have told Milind that in spite of giving up hope she's landed the lead in the film and she knows that if she moves on it would mean the end of their friendship...Milind's character would have happily let go of her. And Gungun would have redeemed herself.
Even Nikki and the way he makes her say what she says to Aby is so forced. He wants us to be Aby and hate the rich brat so he will make her look horrible.
Maybe I am reading too much. Maybe as this wasn't a typical Bhandarkar film where the woman's on top he choses 'bad' women...either way I think in the garb of women centric films he portrays them in real unpleasant light. Barring Fashion's lead, which I think was a very well rounded, perhaps the only 3 dimensional character besides Mumtaz of Chandani Bar that Bhandarkar has ever come across. Even then Fashion was a wasted opportunity.
Do I make any sense?
Here's a link to my take on Fashion-
http://popconned.blogspot.com/2008/11/madhur-bhandarkars-fashion.html
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