Movie reviews

RAB NE BANA DI JODI
CAST: Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, Vinay Pathak;
DIRECTOR: Aditya Chopra
Love is a yellow tiffin box stuffed with garma garam khana, balanced between the knees of that scooter-rider going down a small-town road, on the way to his public sector office, and fellows called Sharmaji, Varmaji, and Sahniji.
Or that’s what Aditya Chopra would have us believe. His new film has Shah Rukh Khan playing Surinder Sahni, a small cog in a big ‘sarkaari’ wheel, living an ordinary 9-to-5 existence. He has a best friend who revels in the name of Bobby aka Balwinder (Vinay). And he’s just acquired a new wife, Taani (Anushka), who’s mourning the untimely exit of an old love.
Tiny three-membered cast, instead of the standard full-scale Yashraj ‘baraat’. Middle-class homes and offices, instead of ornate palaces and Swiss chalets. A hero who wears a thick moustache, black-framed spectacles, and pants which don’t fit. And a simple, unmade-up heroine, dressed, for the most part, in ‘salwaar kameez’ and ‘phulkari dupattas’. No, gulp, pastel chiffons. Could this really be Yashraj turning over a welcome new leaf? Uh huh: the outlines of the characters are new, but the brush-strokes that fill in the whole, aren’t. In its telling, the few fresh touches in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi are overpowered by those that are all too familiar.
It opens with one of the oldest tricks in the book — dying dad asking hero to wed heroine. You’re still getting over that when the film whisks you off to Amritsar, where Surinder and Taani’s love story is destined to unfold. It begins well – they sleep sweetly in separate rooms, and swap such winsome exchanges as her saying “Aap lucky ho ji, ki aap ko kabhi pyaar nahin hua”, with him replying, a tad poetically, “Isse zyada pyar ki na toh mujhe aadat hai na zaroorat”.
Whenever SRK plays an average Joe, he scores. Surinder Sahni is all set to be one of his most-loved parts – his Punjabi ‘leheja’ and his quiet bashfulness are pitch-perfect. But superstars can’t be made to appear ill-dressed wimps who don’t know how to keep their women in the kitchen, when, of course, they are not being meek and pliant in the bedroom.
SRK’s double role arrives in the guise of Raj, and this version is very up to the Amritsar minute — skintight tee, ripped jeans, spiked hair. And there you have it, another creaky nostrum — dull office-going Surinder, or boisterous, brash Raj, what’s a Taani to do? Anushka makes a confident debut, but there’s only so much they can do to keep us engaged for a long two hours 40 minutes. The rest of it is same old same old.
Yashraj set the golden standard for youthful romance back in 1995: DDLJ retrieved the kind of lover that Hindi movies had lost to lust and violence. What we get in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (I doubt if it will ever be shortened to RNBDJ), like in their inflated movies of the past couple of years, is a flurry of the ideas that have worked in the past. “Aap toh Dhoom-3 ho, ji”, says Raj, applauding Taani’s motorbike-riding skills. And you cannot get more self-referential than having your hero say “Yeh dilwala apni dulhaniya le hi jayega”: that’s seriously scraping the barrel.
Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi has some sparkling moments, featuring Surinderji Sahni. The rest is done that, seen this. Are there any new ideas left in the Yashraj chest? Now is the time to delve deep.
—SHUBHRA GUPTA
shubhra.gupta@gmail.com

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
CAST: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith;
DIRECTOR: Scott Derrickson
The day the Earth stood still. An interesting word there – still. Ponder over it. Like films being made on aliens invading the Earth, specifically Manhattan, to warn us, still. Like this film itself being an update of a 1951-version by the same name; the Earth is still around, so are we, still. Like how many times can the completely-still Keanu Reeves replay Neo/The One of Matrix, still. Like it can still get wonderful actors like Connelly and Bates to shore it up.
There are hints of an overtone here, hinting at the general paranoia against aliens/outsiders, leading to convictions without trials. And we humans are obviously very, very bad for Earth. However, this is not the film you need those lessons from.
At one point, the “alien in human body” with the unfortunate name of Klaatu (Reeves) asks Kathy Bates in the unfortunate role of the US Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson: “Do you speak for the entire human race?” She replies: “I represent the President of the United States.”
Her hair in an untidy bun, attired in dowdy tweeds and an ugly chunky necklace, Bates is Condoleeza Rice having a very bad Donald Rumsfeld day. Which she spends walking around, gravely shaking her head, and repeating: “I represent the United States President… We have to do something.” (At one point you even hope this is a spoof, but a look at Reeves’s stony visage puts paid to that.)
Connelly is an astrobiologist – yes there is a thing such as it – who is whisked away from her home in the middle of the night by what looks like a mini-defence force herself. A panicky government has sought her out to prepare for a “sphere moving at very high speed and about to collide into Manhattan in precisely 78 minutes”. She is among a group of scientists summoned, which includes a bearded fellow by the name of Yusuf who never reappears after establishing the broad-based nature of the threat the world is facing.
However, Connelly’s biggest problem might be actually much closer home, and that’s a pesky little son who knows neither the value of discipline nor the virtue of fear. The best of Jaden Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness has been turned into the worst in him here. Connelly looks soulfully on, as only Connelly can.
Finally turning to Reeves. He passed it off in Matrix and even Constantine but let’s just pray this zombie act in black gear is his last. Mercifully he is an alien here who purportedly hasn’t encountered emotions before. At the first sight of “love”, he does a rethink. Bet you can’t tell.
—Shalini Langer
shalini.langer@expressindia.com