Movie: Main Tera Hero
Director: David Dhawan
Cast: Varun Dhawan, Nargis Fakhri, Illeana D’Cruz, Arunoday Singh, Anupam Kher, Rajpal Yadav, Evelyn Sharma
Rating: ***1/2
Commercial films are sometimes the most reassuring gifts that you are offered for a weekend. They fit into your mental space fittingly because of the familiarity you share with the often-used settings, happy-go lucky male leads, clown-like villains, and the knowable happy endings. The escapism is something to die for, as you enjoy the journey with no deeper meanings attached to them realizing that there’s only a single victor who can or will overpower the rest. All you want is a director whom you can trust and root for presenting that very delectable nothingness.
“Main Tera Hero” luckily has such a maker. It isn’t a tribute or a parody by any measure. All it does is to reap the best benefits out of its Telugu original, “Kandireega” and improvise on the comedy quotient in an elevated arena. It is very successful both as a remake and as an independent mindless comic caper to an extent of confessing that even Santosh Srinivas would surely be a happy man to see his debut film translate better in its Hindi version at the capable hands of David Dhawan.
The film predominantly starts off with a southern-film like feel to it. Srinath Prasad, the lead character stays in Ooty and finds his girl in Bangalore. After a location-shift to Thailand in the second half, there’s not much of a diversity visible in the surroundings. If not for David Dhawan, it should have been Rajkumar Santoshi who would have shared a similar joy in remaking such a film. But the director never gives such an opportunity to feel so.
He proves that with this sequence. Varun Dhawan barges into Ileana’s balcony to impress his girl. For once, the lady tells that she would do anything for him to get out of the place at once. The male lead unzips his shirt and advances forward. Just when you think of the obvious, he mistakenly appears in front of her parents and says that “Main Sunaina ko mere six packs dikhane aaya hoon”. This is such a shameless moment for once but the actor and the director strip the awkwardness out of it and make it so much in-tune to enhance the madness quotient in the film that you honestly don’t quite mind.
There’s much to it beyond this with Anupam Kher repeating his words to get the echoic effect amidst the hills he was brought up, Saurabh Shukla suggesting the former to look into the emotion than his rhyming lines and Rajpal Yadav playing second fiddle to Arunoday Singh. In addition, there are those lovely conversations that the actor has with gods of all religions. The laughs in the process are sustained continuously. You feel that it is a blessing that the film admits itself to be a nuisance on the cards. The frames look adorable, so are the leading ladies Ileana D’Cruz and Nargis Fakhri who give it the right styling that the film aspires to maintain.
Varun Dhawan should have ideally utilized this effort as his launch-vehicle to filmdom. He makes most of the chances he gets to showcase his idiosyncrasies such as his potential with humor and his ability to carry an entire film on his sole shoulders and making it seem a piece of cake. He makes the flirtatious-doings get a good balance of naughtiness and charm to them. He mouths dialogues not that you laugh at, but laugh with. Thank you Karan Johar for launching three good actors in Student of The Year, who have made it a point with their second films that they are better off showing their acting veins than skins. Main Tera Hero is an exercise to prove that there’s no greater high than a fun-filled masala film at the end of the day even if it means that you are stereotyping Bollywood with weddings, colours, buffoons, gorgeous costumes and songs. Buy a ticket of this, it comes your way with a two-hour entertainment assured warranty.
Review by Srivathsan N, who had originally written it for Cinegoer.net
