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
