Dulha Mil Gaya (2010)

Perhaps the only reason I picked up the DVD from the shelf is because it flaunted a very glitzy photograph of Shah Rukh Khan, along with a bunch of other actors. Therefore, my prime reason for wanting to watch Dulha Mil Gaya was to be dazzled by King Khan’s charm. However, the pain I had to endure for those two and a half hours annulled any positive feeling that I might have had for him.

The movie revolves around the lives of these rich and famous celebrities, who live the high-life, and have everything anybody could ever dream of, right at their feet. The two main characters are Shimmer (played by Sushmita Sen) a highly successful supermodel, and Tej Dhanraj, AKA Donsai (played by Fardeen Khan) the son of a very wealthy businessman, and heir to all his fortune. The story is about all the measures Donsai takes, to make sure he inherits his father’s property and estate, in accordance to the will his father had drafted right before his death. The story is slightly similar in nature to the Hollywood film The Bachelor (1999), but has all the Indian touches, such as a melodramatic ending, a sprinkle of unnecessary songs and the over-embellished lifestyles of each character.

What irritated me the most was the fact that Shah Rukh khan only appeared in the second half of the movie, appearing for a 60 minute guest appearance, playing Sushmita’s love interest. Another thing I wasn’t able to digest, was how everybody was acting half their age and not doing a good job of it. For instance, when Aamir Khan  plays the role of a college student, he manages to pull it off effectively, and we don’t get outraged when we see him jumping around and dancing. But when Fardeen Khan is acting like a 25 year old and romancing girls who look too young for him, then it just looks wrong. Also, some really crude dialogues have been thrown in here and there that make your jaw drop, while you stare at the screen wondering what happened to good old Indian cinema, where families could sit and watch movies together.

Also, the plot was unoriginal, and did not create any interest or curiosity for one to be able to watch the movie just for the sake of knowing what happens in the end. Basically, the movie hadn’t been made to discuss a topic, or some kind of a story. It seemed like someone – who was obviously a really good friend of Fardeen Khan and Sushmita Sen’s – had made a movie just to make the cast look young and glamorous, and to have a good time shooting in a beautiful location: Trinidad and Tobago.

However, there were some funny moments. Shimmer’s manager and butler, who were both named after flowers, Lotus and Jasmine, were always fighting, with Lotus, the butler, being somewhat of a ‘dumb blonde’. Sushmita Sen looked gorgeous as she has lost weight and come back into shape, and also acted well according to her character: her sarcasm and snobby attitude were almost comical. Shahrukh Khan is also just naturally very witty and charming.

In conclusion, this was one experience one would not want to go through again, or let anybody else go through for that matter. Avoid at all costs. Enjoy a good book or a home-cooked meal instead if there is nothing else to do to kill time – Manal Faheem Khan

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2010, Genre – Drama, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Subodh Vivek Vasvani, Director – Mudassar Aziz, Music Director – Lalit Pandit, Cast - Fardeen Khan, Sushmita Sen, Ishita Sharma, Mohit Chada, Johny Lever, Suchitra Pillai, Bina Kak, Parikshit Sahni, Tara Sharma, Vivek Vasvani, Howard Rosemeyer, Vivek Vasvani, Shahrukh Khan

Life Partner (2009)

Like all art forms, films have their own genres: thriller, suspense, romantic, comedy etc. Bollywood has all those and one genre that stands entirely on its own – the Govinda movie. Now how does one define a quintessential Govinda flick? Calling it mindless entertainment would be too simplistic, it is crass yet erudite, educating audiences in the most ludicrous manner about human nature. Take Life Partner, where Govinda understands he can no longer be a hero. Yet he maintains his Govinda-ness in that age-old role of a divorce lawyer and while marriage is a dead end for his friends it is a lucrative enterprise for him. Like the smash hit of the season Kambakkht Ishq, it starts off from the premise that marriage is anathema and Govinda – the saviour and Casanova extraordinaire – is in perpetual conflict with his friends Tusshaar Kapoor and Fardeen Khan (who else would pick a script like this? Even John Abraham left this league eons ago). In the female leads are the annoying Genelia D’Souza and a naik parveen Prachi Desai, with Prachi quite set in her character of the misunderstood parvati, sporting the sullen look of a brave bahu.

Life Partner boasts of a band of merry musketeers: Govinda, Tusshar and Fardeen. Fardeen is cast opposite a highly spoilt Genelia who turns out to be expensive excess luggage as the film proceeds. The two jump into unholy matrimony at the emblem of arranged marriage: Tusshar and Prachi’s mandap. The first half of the film therefore belongs to the director Rumi Jaffrey’s well balanced debate extolling both the virtues of love and arranged marriages via his cinematic lens. The film lulls on with timely jokes from Govinda, who one must give credit for not hogging all the screen space and appearing only where he makes an impact, and the typical shenanigans of boys having fun. Although some scenes and dialogues were quite hilarious and had the cinema’s audience roaring throughout. One in particular is when Fardeen, Genelia and Tusshar take a trip and Fardeen checks into a fabulously luxurious suite which the innocent and pappu Tusshar thinks is for the boys and gets a rude reality check when Genelia, unlike the doses of parampara that his father feeds him in their archaic Gujrati household, willingly jumps into.

The interval is perhaps the most exciting moment in this film leaving audiences speculating what happens next. The latter half then takes on the lessons to learn before getting married, and the differences between a relationship and a marriage, ala Fardeen emphatically telling Genelia, “Stop being my girlfriend and start being my wife”. Many a couple could be seen relating to the subject and enjoying the often painful transitions that they too had to make.

So although the film was blah, the audiences seemed to be in throes of laughter at this family drama cum slap stick cum marriage counsellor farce that proved to be a good respite after a long torturous battle with the spouse. The concluding scenes however are just too sickeningly over done and make the film (if it wasn’t already falling from grace) beyond saving. Nonetheless Govinda’s cheekiness proves to be a good buffer and even though at times it felt like he had lost his touch, he’s still enough of a legend to pull the scattered bits of the script together to render it relatively comical coherent. Ultimately, Life Partner is inanely idiotic yet frivolously fun – Hani Taha Salim (Rating – 2 OUT OF 5)

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 2009, Genre – Comedy, Country – India, Language – Hindi, Producer – Abbas Burmawalla, Mustan Burmawalla, Director – Rumi Jaffrey, Music Director – Pritam, Sachin-Jigar, Cast – Govinda, Fardeen Khan, Tusshar Kapoor, Genelia D’Souza, Prachi Desai, Anupam Kher, Vikram Gokhale, Darshan Jariwala, Shoma Anand, Rajesh Jais, Sheetal Gori, Master Ali, Vivek Shauq, Jagdeep, Rana Jung Bahadur, Himani Shivpuri