Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (Hindi)

Wow! I sound angry, once more: “Give me a fucking break someone from these sappy braindead Bollywood romantic dramas. Ridiculous, preposterous, IQ of sub 10, synthetic to the core with weirdly concocted conflicts and self-congratulatory rejoicing in weirder resolutions (what are these people smoking?), its retrogressive and suprisingly a painful bore. The only saving grace is Shahrukh Khan and how he brings in shades to the everyman Surinder Sahni solely through his performance. The opening 15 minutes uptil the Haule Haule song was a nice, enjoyable munch as you see this awkwardly engaged couple (in what has to be the most unsubtly obvious way) try to share common space–its all played straight but SRK’s great fun on screen with his brand of physical comedy. And then, the bomb drops. A talent hunt reality show looking for the ultimate dancing couple lands in this small town and the husband goes for a makeover (i.e. trims his moustache, gels and streaks his hair, plus wears teeny-bopper casuals) which the wife doesn’t recognise. So a conflict is created out of thin air, and you try your hardest to suspend disbelief in the girl’s and the movie’s manipulative naivete. But how? There’s no character progression, the central bimbo’s asked to played straight and being a debutante she obliges and does little else (God, in that one guest appearance song when you see actresses like Preity and Kajol jiving you know exactly what’s amiss in today’s Bollywood-that screen-chewing raw appeal in actors that would make you gulp anything they mouth on screen),  it keeps on going in circles for some godawful 3 hours for no rhyme or reason and trust me, if I see one more Bollywood movie with Shiamak Davar brand of aerobics-choreography and bimbettes + dudes forever dressed in gym shorts and push-up bras, I will rip my clothes off. Its fcking enough already, and as for Adi, how dumb do you think we are? All the while I was thinking of some deep metaphor embedded somewhere in this grossly lookist and superficial drama, but its like looking at the drain–the deeper you dig, the more black sludge you scoop out. The subtext is atrocious and you even used “seeing God in people” (your version of trying to articulate something intangible behind instant chemistry between two people) as a pivot conflict resolutor in which the girl sits hands folded in Golden Temple and just because the hubby is walking in her direction (considering she’s come with him to the temple, isn’t that the most natural thing?) pat she goes–this is who I’ll spend the life with. Please get a life! Even the worst of stinkers courtesy of your banner have had 10 times more thought in them than this stillborn nonsensical pap. 

PS: I was just reading Khalid’s glowing review and this is something I pondered about-maybe there’s some huge metaphor in the conflict of the movie… about a common man trying hard to place himself in the fantasies of his wife… but its sorta undone by dialogue in a key scene where he says something on the lines of “my disguise and dance is for her to laugh with me, but to love me she gotta take me as I am” which is sorta conflicting considering dancing and laughing is what made the wife happy. The disguise as a leap of faith is difficult to take for the viewer because this tacky, chauvinistic, played-straight-with-an-S movie (for most parts) takes the route of a banal dance competition and doesn’t even pursue it properly (the disguised SRK is an irritating wannabe and the actor seems to have improvised on the sets recycling or pastiching his earlier goofy roles), so when the movie fails at a literal level, for me it fails on other planes too.”