Dil Dhadkne Do: An outcome of overconfidence, gone terribly wrong

 

 



God, it has been more than three and half months since I have been here and written about movies. Well for one, I was stuck into the quagmire of life with too many things happening simultaneously and also the fact that I did not see any cinema, or perhaps any cinema worth reviewing. I did see Byomkesh Bakshi, but could not come upto review it. Anyways, a movie which you really like, also calls for a review, and to me, Byomkesh was not. As a bengali, who has read the originals and who has lived through far better bengali versions (see Chiriyaghar by Satyajit Ray) that I have devoured upon there seemed too much focus on th peripherals and euphemsims, leaving the audience with the vacuum of plot and direction, the movie takes. Another gaffe, the director has taken two Byomkesh Bakshi stories and created a punch out of it. As an afficiando, one will reason that one Byomkesh storyline is enough to have you engrossed, handling two is suicide.                                      

Let us for now, talk of Dil Dhadkne Do. After Zindagi Na Mile Dobara, Zoya decides to take us on a cruise to Greece, Turkey and some more exotic destinations. She is still on the travelogue mode, perhaps because of her formula working well the last time, and one still keeps on hearing of tourism surge to Spain after ZNNMD. This one however (DDD) falls short on several counts. The script for one, was not too clear, characters were out of depth, the storyline a tad too long, and most of the large star cast, were mostly slipping in and out of their characters.

There was Anil and Ranveer and Priyanka, and Shefali (god, she was wasted, so much for a brilliant actress, who could have been exploited more) and Farhaan and if that is not enough, Aamir Khan too. Pity, they could never carry the burden of Zoya's overconfidence. Why it did not work, for one none of the characters were given the space and time to develop. As it starts building up, Cut! it moves to the next scene. The dysfunctional Mehras (as we are told) look more dysfunctional on paper and less in reality. Infact, most of them mourn for their causes in an exotic locale, making mourning look oh! so classy. You could mourn on the cruise deck or in the Turkish Hamam or on the clear Mediterranean beaches or any other exotic locale, but did we resonate with the character or perhaps more with the backdrop. Second, the plot looked too long and at times mindless. There were moments, which never synced with the central storyline and making it look long. The Farhaan track in the movie, for one is an instance (Guess, you cannot do that, with the producer himself being involved in this case). Third, the director could not really handle her subtleties well, I thought for which Zoya is known to excel. Her characters have always lived through them, Konkona Sen in Luck by Chance or Katrina Kaif's easy charm were subtle and worked well. Fourth, her support cast to the central characters (the five of them, including the dog) were never really there. One it was a large cast (can't help that, since the script demanded so) and none of them stood out, like I said they all came in and went off.

There was a lot of expectations riding with the movie, but it looked more a caper in elements. The music was average, with nothing to write about. Shefali was never exploited for her brilliance, Priyanka stood more for the glamour quotient, Ranveer was not too sure of his reason to live through the movie, Anil Kapoor as usual taking things a little too seriously (the only exception being Mr. India), Farhaan not too sure, what was he doing, Anushka still carrying her carefree attitude movie after movie and unable to shed the garb (I seemed to only like her Rab Ne Bana De...) and there is nothing else to write about. But, yes the Dog had the longest lines in the movie, and they seemed to making sense, but if they were set in a human psychology class. The least, one could have taken away from the movie, what to expect and not to on a cruise...