Kya Dil Ne Kaha Hindi Movie
This one had it all -- terrific songs, an attractive star cast and an attentive viewership. And then writer-director Sanjay Chhel went and spoilt everything.
Something goes wrong with Kyaa Dil Ne Kahaa right from the opening when Chhel's efforts to spoof on the Hum Aapke Hain Koun stereotype of a happy joint family merge into a half-grudging admiration for the genre.
From the time we see Esha, Esha Deol, a horribly pampered, tradition-bound girl from a large household flying down to New Zealand for further studies we know the film is in trouble. Once in New Zealand she, and director Chhel, go berserk.
Studies are forgotten, books go out of the window while Esha giggles, rolls her eyes, sings and prances with the campus casanova Rahul, played by Tusshar Kapoor, who doesn't believe in commitment and long-lasting relationships.
Chhel's depiction of a foreign land is similar to the way an average viewer in smaller Indian cities would imagine it.
Chhel wants his Yash Chopra and his David Dhawan. So he adds dashes of overpowering desi spice to the European flavour. Hence there are a couple of Indian campus buffoons in New Zealand, one of them played by gifted Marathi actor Dilip Joshi, who crack awful toilet jokes about virgin brides and incest.
As a writer Chhel had revealed certain verve in his first directorial vehicle Khubsoorat. In Kyaa Dil Ne Kahaa Chhel's repository of repartees occurs as smart aleck interjections rather than an essential part of the narration.
The protagonist Rahul is a wayward child who thinks marriage is for the wimps. Reason? His parents, played by Smita Jaykar and Rajesh Khanna --with badly dyed hair -- behave like Tom and Jerry at home.
Chhel means to bring out the poignant plight of a maladjusted child who has grown up watching his parents squabble constantly. But the marital discord is delineated like scenes out of a clumsily written sitcom.
Lest Tusshar feel left behind, Chhel makes him do Raj Kapoor's joker-with-a-bleeding-heart act in a party scene. To have the cinema greats cropping up in a work of this sort makes us cringe in embarrassment.
Rahul won't marry his tradition-bound sweetheart, and insists on making a bloody nuisance of himself in Esha's family. With a protagonist whose fool-hardly rebellion gets on our nerves constantly, Chhel's plot doesn't go very far.
In one scene Esha jumps out of her wedding marquee to run and embrace her errant lover-boy in the audience. Are we expected to clap for such crap? And what values and culture does Chhel propagate by showing his stars as megalomaniacs so lost in their passion that they don't give a damn for social or moral values?
To their credit, the actors, especially Tusshar and Esha, struggle to create a semblance of order and logic. The leading stars show a marked improvement as compared with their previous works.
In the second half when she's required to perform complex dramatic scenes, Esha excels even in her rare silent moments of muted pain. She proves herself a better actress than her legendary mother Hema Malini ever was.
As a dancer Esha excels in the Taza Taza and Nikamma numbers where she glides effortlessly even as the film creaks and groans forward.
The music by Himesh Reshammiya is clearly the focal point.
Production values are below average. Shockingly, some frames are shot out of focus. With the kind of hype that preceded the film, the least we expected was a decently assembled romantic musical. All we get are garbled sermons on why marriage as an institution must survive.
But what about the survival of that other imminently threatened institution, mainstream Hindi cinema?
