Movie Review : Raanjhanaa (2013)

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Rating : 3/5
Genre : Romance
Year : 2013
Running time : 2 hours 20 minutes
Director : Anand L. Rai
Cast : Dhanush, Sonam Kapoor, Abhay Deol, Kumud Mishra, Swara Bhaskara, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayub, Shilpi Marwaha , Vipin Sharma
Kid rating : PG

I went in to see Raanjhanaa with moderate expectations. Director Anand Rai did give us “Tanu vs. Manu”, but there is also Dhanush to contend for here. I came away with my moderate expectations satisfied – the film was breezy and beautiful in the first half, but the post-interval phase was a disappointment.

The son of a Benarasi priest, Hindu Kundan Shankar (Dhanush) has been in love with wealthy Muslim Zoya Haider (Sonam Kapoor) for as long as he can remember. She blows hot and cold, wily and innocent by turns, when it suits her. He, undaunted, pursues her in a most stalker-ish fashion (read eve-teasing/sexual molestation in it’ s small-town avatar), threatening to slit his wrists if she doesn’t succumb to his (non-existent) charms. Zoya’s parents affronted by her audacity at continuing a mild flirtation with a Hindu boy ship her off to her phuphi’s (aunt : father’s sister) in Aligarh. From there Zoya moves on to studying at JNU, Delhi. Here she meets student leader Akram (Abhay Deol) and falls for him.

Dhanush, complacent in his love, waits for Zoya to return to Benares. He feels jilted when he finds out that she loves another, but there is nothing he can do about it, is there?

The first half of the film flows easy and smooth. Characters are well-drawn and director Rai displays the same knack for bringing small-town UP (Uttar Pradesh) to the screen as he did in ”Tanu vs. Manu”. There is humor and romance; momentous events pile up right before the interval, and I’m waiting to dig into the second half. Post-interval however, the film loses steam. The narrative plot gets jumbled. Large swathes of the film are spent on the JNU campus and in Delhi, with not much happening. The end is fickle and patchy.

Dhanush plays the role of a small-town, indigent, not-very-educated, not-good-looking man in the film. His love, Zoya, by contrast, is wealthy, beautiful, well-educated and has seen the world outside their little town. There is no match here. He, blind to these disparities, still pines for her, and expects her to return the fervor. Dhanush and Sonam, both good actors, do very well here. It is a pity that their characters have so many negative shades to them. She is wily and capricious, mindful only of her wants. He, besotted, is callous towards everyone but her. I didn’t feel very much for either one of them.

The supporting cast, though, brings the film big brownie points. Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub plays Kundan’s good friend Murari and Swara Bhaskar plays Bindiya, who is very much in love with Kundan and not afraid to show it – Kundan pays her no heed and uses her abominably. Both Ayub and Bhaskar are fabulous and I liked them much more than the leads – I wish the film had been about them instead. Kumud Misra, who you might recognize as “Khatana-bhai” from Rockstar, is fantastic here as Zoya’s father. Vipin Sharma, in a smaller role is just as good as Kundan’s Tamilian father.

A good romance should make you feel like the lead pair must end up together. Here, I didn’t feel that way, and because the film purports to be a romance, in my view it fails. Hence the low rating. Dhanush, for all his acting, has neither the looks, the physique nor the charisma of a leading man – I am rather under-whelmed by this hero. But, it’s not all his fault. The real problem here is unsympathetic characters – if I can’t feel for my hero/heroine, how am I even going to care how they end up?

Raanjhanaa is an average watch – you’re sure to be entertained in the first half; just bear through the second.

Kidwise : There is some surprisingly colorful language here – in true UP-ite flavor. The dialogs get pretty crude at times, so watch out for that. Other than that, the film is clean, although younger kids are bound to get rather bored in the less-action-only-dialog second half.