In 2014
Shashank Khaitan made ‘Humpty Sharma ki Dulhaniya’ with Alia Bhatt and Varun
Dhavan and 2017 sees the same trio have a go at it again and Humpty Sharma
morphs into Badrinath Bansal from Jhansi.
There is
something extremely charming about the Desi hinterland that has claimed most of
the cinema space in recent years. The charm lies in the fact that the Desi is
hip ... this was a barrier that existed for long not just in Cinema but in all
of the visible media space in any field. Strangely this barrier was blown to
smithereens in the field of cricket by a lad from Ranchi who stormed into the
team to captain it and lift the world cup bringing the country honor's of kinds
it had seen only decades ago. Mahendra Singh Dhoni with his wacky hair do his cool
quotient and consistent performance made the Desi look cool beyond everything seen,
heard or experienced before. Could Cinema the virtual mirror of a changing
society have remained very far behind?
Everyone
now rushes out of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata and the location ethos has moved to
places like Gurgaon, Haryana, Jaipur in Rajasthan to now Jhansi and Kota in
this film. From here the Desi boy and girl fearlessly steps out of the country
and becomes International. Gone are the days when international necessarily
meant you were big city Urban and Polished. Now the edgy unfinished Desi also
fearlessly expresses and achieves his dreams and those aren’t small anymore.
That apart, here we walk into a classical stereotype father of the North –
Central India.
Retrograde
customs like dowry are bandied about along with the gender inequality with absolute
casual impunity. A girl child being a liability and the boy kid being an asset
sets the tone of the film for the ethos that grooms such a mindset in society.
So here we have a tenth pass Badrinath the second son of a counting machine of
a father in Rituraj ( quite credible ) who is by profession a moneylender but
never is seen lending or receiving money. Badri does extort for his father in
his informal recovery department and in one such case wrangles out an invite
for a wedding of a borrower, at Kota. In the marriage Badri runs into the fiery,
spunky, extremely articulate Vaidehi of a service goer father ( Swanand
Kirkire, the poet, singer and Music director in reality ). She who has been
cheated and jilted in her prior attempt at love has now given up the idea of “holy
matrimony” despite being of an eligible age. She would rather see her elder
sister married off first.
Now we
enter another regressive methodology called persistent stalking that climaxes
into a scene where the girl is virtually picked up, kidnapped and dumped into
the boot of a car and whisked away by the hero who has been rebuffed by her
time and again. Yet he is so charming and sincere and otherwise well mannered
and in today’s times won’t hurt to call him sanskari either. He proposes
marriage first having seen two instances of loving a partner not working
favorably; one in his house with his otherwise quiet brother who enjoys a
tipple on the rooftop terrace every single day. In the memory of a past love in
whose place he has been wedded to a Shweta Prasad (the talented child star from
Makdee and Iqbal who now looks extremely fetching in a sari ). The plot is so
wafer thin that in a food analogy it seems like the proverbial yet very well
made Chiwda in the first half and turns into bland popcorn in the second,as it travels to Singapore. 
Yet it is a
splendid easy going watch of a film simply because of the energetic pair of
Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhavan who have sensational onscreen chemistry that they
simply sparkle. Close your eyes and the light hearted romance resembles that of
a Govinda film of the 90’s where you were expected to leave your thinking cells
at home. Varun Dhavan has grown up on them; what with his father David having
directed most of them.
The songs are hummable and fun; from the boisterous " Aashiq Surrender Hua" to the melodious " Humsafar" and "Roke na Ruke Naina" and the zingy title track "Badri Ki Dulhaniya"
While Alia is as usual
on the button with her performance, it is Varun Dhavan who injects sweetness
into his Badrinath and so totally looks the part and always remains in character.
It is a must watch for all those who love the honest to goodness, lack
of pretense, of a Bollywood 'Mad Masala Movie'.
