Movie: Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania
Director: Shashank Khaitan
Cast: Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Siddharth Shukla, Ashutosh Rana
Rating: ***
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania is as significant to Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt just like how DDLJ meant to Shahrukh and Kajol in the latter 90′s. This is home territory. You’re in ? Give a guess and you can be sure of not going wrong, Punjab. The love might have sprung up in the picturesque locales of Europe then, here Delhi is amply sufficient. The places could have been anywhere else too for the candy floss romance to be nurtured. But, Karan Johar now means business, very literally. The girl’s already engaged within minutes into the film and there comes the escape, holidaying season in a city for a designer dress. The producer uses his stamp to advantage. Her father’s strict and as you await, welcome the heart-winning foolish jack into the scene, Rakesh Sharma a.k.a Humpty. He’s that typical underdog, girl-charming material who gets loveable and. . Do you need more ?
Everything on the outset is already in place. Such films don’t need a great conflict point even it strives to have one. The need of the hour is a lovestruck pair who can be the contemporary ‘Do Jism-Ek Jaan’ where you don’t need those three words to grasp that they are in love. Varun and Alia are that kind. Their sparkle rubs so much madness into it that the lookalike Bollywood setting, however distracting it may be, takes the backseat. The plot is otherwise flat but the live wire energy is it’s strength.
Rakesh Sharma is named after the Indian who first landed on the moon. When his father explains this reason, he doesn’t mind equating the moon to be a girl. The film is filled with similar naughtily feel-good moments. You are awaiting them after seeing the actor mold himself so well as the flirt in Main Tera Hero. If you required him to show how his worth beyond a Salman Khan aping shirt-less avatar, your quest can rightly end here. Alia Bhatt looks like she has landed up with the same freshness she exuberantly showcased in 2 States. She pulls of the emotional sequences with an inexplicable ease where her tears and smile come off together as if they were desperate to embrace each other. When you have lead actors scraping past their parts with such infectious form, the film more often lands in a safe zone.
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania’s two halves are dissected into urban and rural glorifying sessions, commencing with Delhi, progressing in Ambala and almost ending at a railway station. Ashutosh Rana does the same that a south-film bound aficionado would have been seeing Prakash Raj do so effortlessly for years now. He’s less effective in comparison as the obsessive father, a rock for the public, who decides everything for his pampered daughter and convinces her of his choice of a ‘life-set-ho-jayegi’ NRI partner.
Even if you need to delve deep into the Humpty-Kavya equation, the male looks the more traditional one. The girl is full of fizz where her small-town background is a contrast to the way she talks, dresses and adapts to her surroundings. The guy has a dad who gives up his long time savings to buy a car for his son’s lady love. The old-worldness continues when the friends, throughout the film stay by his side sparing an occasional whim.
The songs are multifarious, understandable for the ‘play-safe’ instruction that the director follows in staying true to the Punjabi flavor. They are well built, surrounded by goons, think less with the brain and more with the heart as Varun Dhawan himself says in a sequence. The hero wins them with their weakness. The satire on gays, nearly the Sajid Khan style becomes a roadblock to an otherwise free flowing film. Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania is a contemporary spoof of Bollywood’s romantic escapades, more or so the Shahrukh Khan legacy, considering the references of a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and DDLJ in particular. It’s less annoying than I Hate Luv Storys and is fun as long as it lasts.
Review by Srivathsan N. First published in Cinegoer.net