Namrata Joshi
The only thing that keeps you mildly engaged for the interminable 155 minutes of Dilwale is Sanjay Mishra’s tomfoolery, but even there you are left wondering whether the entire track is a bunch of silly lines or clever brand placement. With Dilwale, Rohit Shetty goes hopelessly wrong despite much that he had at his disposal, including a power-packed cast and producer. Not that one has ever expected anything more than a masala entertainer from him but Dilwale has neither masala nor entertainment. It is just an unappetising khichdi (hodge-podge) of action, emotion, romance and comedy. But even in two of these four elements, which Shetty specialises in, he comes out curiously lacking. The flying cars refuse to thrill. As for the funny bits, well there’s something tragic about a comedy when you laugh at it than along with it. Dilwale’s comic track fits that bill.SRK and his brother Varun are running a Dilip Chhabria kind of car modification enterprise in Goa with loyal aides Mukesh Tiwari and Pankaj Tripathi for company with a cartoonish drug lord, Boman Irani, lurking in the background. But there is also a Mafiosi past in Bulgaria; gold consignments straight out of the era of Hindi film villains like Loin, some gunshots, a heartbreak and dialogue like “Hum shareef kya hue poori duniya hi badmash ban gayi” (When we turned respectable, the whole world turned dishonest) and “Zindagi ne itni pulling ki, kabhi striling nahi mili”. Let’s not even try and translate that!
The deliberate attempt to repackage and sell the Kajol-SRK romance of yore backfires, seeming like a pale shadow of the magic there once was. The two seem like caricatures of Raj-Simran. Much water has flown under the bridge and all that. Yes, nostalgia can, at times, suck. So Gerua can’t be a patch on Sooraj hua maddham. And Shetty can’t a Chopra-Johar be.
Varun overdoes it. SRK is hemmed in, Kajol tries too hard. Pankaj Tripathi, now what is an actor like that doing there? Only one having a good time is Sanjay Mishra. Also, just as an aside, SRK looks great in the stubbly avatar. He should stay unshaven forever.
