Another Long Weekend Spent Watching Movies

This long weekend was also spent chilling out at home, pigging out on yummy food, and watching random movies.

For this weekend’s movie watching, we chose the following:

• Dil Bole Hadippa – Bollywood movie starring over-the-hill Rani Mukherjee and hottie Shahid Kapoor
• Twilight – Hollywood movie starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It’s a love story between a teenage girl and a vampire

Both these movies have received mixed reviews. Dil Bole Hadippa tanked at the box office, but Twilight has been one of those super-hits, which everyone seems to love to deride.

For both these movies, our movie-watching expectations were pretty low. So did these movies meet our low expectations? Well, read on to find out. First up is…

Dil Bole Hadippa

This is the famed so-called Rani Mukherjee and Yash Raj Films comeback movie.

The story revolves around a Punjabi girl Veera Kaur (Rani Mukherjee) who has a dream to play cricket for India. I don’t exactly know where she lives because sometimes they mention Amritsar but they are showing a village and Amritsar is not a village.

There is a friendly competition between Vicky (Anupam Kher) who is an Indian and Lucky (Dilip Tahil) who is a Pakistani. They hold a cricket match between Indian Tigers and Pakistani Champions annually to celebrate their old friendship. The only problem is that Indian Tigers have been losing from the past 8 years.

Therefore, Vicky calls his son Rohan (Shahid Kapoor) from England, who is the captain of a county team, to train the team.

Veera Kaur would like to try out for the team but she is not eligible because she is a woman. Therefore, she dons a turban, fake moustache, and beard, calls herself Veer and gets selected for the team. Meanwhile, Rohan is falling in love with Veera…and so the story goes.

My thoughts on this movie:

I found the first half of this movie extremely slow. The director really took his time setting up the characters and the situation. It was a good thing that I was also reading a (very engrossing) book while watching this movie, because otherwise I would not have been able to sit through it. The second half was somewhat better as the movie picks up pace; I actually put down my book to watch certain scenes!

Shahid emotes well, and dances pretty well. He brings some amount of freshness to this rather stale movie.

Rani has received good press for her performance. However, her acting was very jarring and unappealing for my taste. As Veera, she is very loud (I am rather tired of that hoary stereotype that Punjabi village belles are very loud and outspoken). Surely, not everyone can be like that!

As Veer, initially she did look credible as a man. But as the movie wore on, I found that although she tried hard, her male persona is just not believable at all. Her body frame is petite and curvaceous, and this is a big disadvantage when you are supposed to play a man. In addition, the drawn on mustache and beard would not fool anyone. Her body language and emotions are distinctively feminine – the sway of her hips, the rolling of the eyes, her voice.

I just could not help feeling that another actress might have been physically more suitable for the role. How about Lara Dutta, who is quite tall and muscular? She could have passed for a man far better than Rani. She might also have given a subtler interpretation to Veera’s character.

If Yash Raj Films could take a chance with Shahid, why not with the heroine as well?

Apart from the 2 lead characters, there are also an unnecessary Rakhi Sawant and Sherlyn Chopra. I read in the newspapers that Sherlyn Chopra was upset about her role. And after seeing this movie, I think she has every right to be. The only thing she seems to do (repetitively!) is wear extremely short shorts and halters and apply sunscreen in a rather provocative manner right in front of the Indian team practicing cricket. This movie has done her no favors; she is definitely not going to escape the “item girl” tag after this role. I also disliked the way she was portrayed as a “modern girl” from Chandigarh who is advised by Veer to learn how to make parathas to win her man. How much more cliched and regressive can you get!!

The film made innumerable references to previous Yashraj hits, a practice I’m getting quite sick of. I mean I’m all for touting your success, but I do not need to be reminded of them in every Yash Raj Films movie!

All in all, I am glad that I watched this movie on DVD, rather than at the cinema hall. My review would have been even more scathing if I had had to fork out mucho bucks for this crap.

Now on to Twilight:

This movie is based on the best-selling novel Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I did not like the book that much. To know why, click here. So, I wasn’t expecting too much from the movie.

To my surprise, I found the movie to be much better. I quite liked Kristen Stewart as Isabella Swan. She totally looked and acted the part. I found Robert Pattinson as Edward okay too. I do think he was feeling a bit uncomfortable by the fact that he had to wear so much makeup and lipstick in order to look the part :).

But, while the book meandered on almost unbearably, the movie was very crisp and concise, yet very beautifully shot and poetic. The cinematography was extremely beautiful and I loved the background music score.

Some scenes were much more effective pictured than in the book – such as the baseball game, the car crash scene, and the big vampire fight at the end. What was a disappointment was the scene of Edward glittering in the sunlight. He looked sooo ridiculous.

I must say the movie wasn’t as bad I had feared it to be and I actually enjoyed it 🙂 The faults I did find in the movie were those that were in the book as well – a weak ending, and a lack of plot. It would be nice if this series of movies would not stick quite so closely to the book plot. I like the basic theme of these books very much, just wish they had been written and plotted better.

What about you? Would you want the Twilight series of books to be a faithful interpretation of the books? Or would you want the movies to move in a different direction?

And how did you spend your long weekend?