Review : Dil Kabaddi

Rating : Poor (2.2/5)
Genre : Drama
Year : 2008
Running time : 2 hours 10 minutes
Director : Anil Senior
Cast : Irrfan Khan, Soha Ali Khan, Rahul Bose, Konkona Sen Sharma, Payal Rohtagi, Rahul Khanna
Kid rating : A

DIL KABADDI : TORTUROUS !

“Dil kabaddi” is apparently an Indianised version of Woody Allen’s “Husband’s and wives” – a desi take on infedility in a marriage. We have two couples, one Samit (Irfan) and Mita (Soha), and the other Rishi (Bose) and Simi (Konkona). Samit and Mita decide to split up, much to Rishi and Simi’s consternation. Samit hitches up with kooky Yoga instructor Kaya (Paya Rohtagi), and Mita, after much weeping and hand-wringing decides to get dating again.

Rishi and Simi meanwhile rethink their partner-ship, he, a professor, on more-than-friendly terms with a student, and she a journalist, almost in love with another man. It’s a tangled web, with lots of sex talk and sexual references thrown in. And if it was reaching for a deeper meaning, it gets lost in the messy thingamajig that is the screenplay.

“Dil kabaddi” is a warbled, garbled film. The characters are interesting, better handled it might have made a better film, but as is, they come in slip-shod and eccentric. The actors playing these ill-defined characters give it their best shot, but that isn’t enough to keep this film from sinking. The direction is amateurish, and the product comes across as incoherent and disjointed.

This film tries to get into the nitty-gritty of relationships, and tries to be quick and clever about it. The couples are, at least on the outside, smart, savvy and snappy. On the inside they are emotional wrecks like the rest of us. As such you’d think that it would be easy to sympathize with their predicament and root for them, in their search for “The One”. Unfortunately not. Inept handling makes this a difficult job – the one character for whom I felt (remote) sympathy was Mita.

This is an awful film, and not even strong acting performances could redeem it.

Kidwise : Contains sexual references, and gets an A rating.