Genre : All-in-one
Year : 2009
Running time : 2 hours 30 minutes
Director : Anurag Singh
Cast : Anupam Kher, Shahid Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee, Rakhi Sawant, Vrajesh Hirjee, Dalip Tahil, Poonam Dhillon, Sherlyn Chopra
Kid rating : PG
DIL BOLE HADIPPA (MOVIE REVIEW) : AVERAGE ENTERTAINER !
“Dil bole hadippa” is predictable fare, but we already knew that, didn’t we ? Seating myself in an almost packed theatre this Friday evening, I was pretty sure what I was in for. Even so, this film did better than expected, and actually surprised me with a breezy first half. The second half didn’t do as well, but still left me decently entertained, which is more than I can say for all the other crap out there.
The film’s story, as I’ve said before is of a rebellious girl, Veera Kaur (Rani), in love with cricket. To make it to her local town’s team she dresses up as boy, and becomes the star player of a team captained by England-returned Rohan (Shahid). Their objective ? To beat the Pakistani team and win the “Aman” cup. The Pakistanis have won it 9 years in a row, so understandably the pressure is high.
Admittedly with such a clichéd script (notwithstanding the cricket angle) Shahid and Rani have their hands tied. But inspite of that, they both do very well. Rani as a feisty Veera Kaur, and then as scrawny Sardar Veer Pratap Singh gives a great unselfconscious performance. She gets into the spirit of things, not only as exuberant Veera spouting pidgin English at Rohan, but scrambling around quite boyishly on the field as Veer. Shahid exudes affable charm, and it doesn’t hurt that he dances well and can do intense scenes as well as he can comedy. While a slimmer Rani makes her almost-comeback with this film, Shahid proves he’s on his way to a well-earned super-stardom.
A great amount of time, to my surprise was spent on the cricketing field, either on Rohan’s team’s practice, or on the India-Pakistan matches. The first half of the film established the characters; there’s Veera running around in Punjab ke khet, with her sidekicks Shanno (Rakhi Sawant), Hirjee, and the rest of the nautanki company. And there’s Rohan brought to India by his motherland-loving father, and persuaded to train and lead the local town cricket team. Thus, while pre-intermission the film was well-paced and we are treated to some colorful, in-your-face songs, and some very tried-and-tested boy-meets-girl scenarios, the second half tried to do it all. It combined a sorta half-baked love story, with a cricket match, some very archaic Indian platitudes, and an appeal for equality for women, and came up rather thin in all quarters.
While the biggest downer was the predictability, the whole pseudo-patriotic theme got pretty annoying too. It is understandable that the film plays up the India-Pakistan rivalry (this is cricket after all), but when it came down to touting the merits of Indian culture over “Western” values, the dialogues sounded heavy and hollow. The film toed the Punjabi patriarchal line; the good desi woman wore salwar-kameezes (and thought dresses witch-wear) while the clingy siren wore shorts and halter tops, and for good measure seductively slathered on a sunscreen lotion in full view of the entire cricket team. And then all the whining and moaning about a woman’s right to do this and that – and all the woman is ever shown doing is being at the man’s mercy (even if he is the Captain of the team) – to play or sit , as his emotional state of mind sees fit.
The film was bright, slick and nicely packaged. The songs were energetic, although I can’t exactly recall the melodies now. The film made innumerable references to previous Yashraj hits, a practice I’m getting quite sick of. I mean I’m all for touting your success, but I do not need to be reminded of them in every YRF movie ! The dialogues sucked – lots of clichés thrown in. And I didn’t think that there was much chemistry between Shahid and Rani, although it looked like they tried to get the “Jab we met” feel.
Inspite of all this, why does “Dil bole hadippa” get an above average rating ? Well, firstly because it was relatively clean. I say relatively, because there is Rakhi Sawant displaying and heaving copious amounts of cleavage. There is also Sherlyn Chopra, the resident vamp who’m no-one likes, and she is heralded on screen by the in-thing these days : background music which sounds like breathy pseudo-sexy cat-calls – in her case it was a refrain of “Soniya” (that’s her name in the film). And like every other desi masala film I’ve seen, there was the subtle objectification; little snatches of on-screen time, where all you could see was a woman’s bust or hip or waist. No face, and no body to go with it – just those pieces of anatomy.
And secondly, for a Friday night entertainer, with a few shards of intelligence, this was a film which shone remarkably with the screen presence of two of Bollywood’s brightest and most likable stars. You really don’t get that too often.
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