Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

I think my view of 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' was greatly influenced by the trailer of ‘New York’, that was shown before Rab Ne. I hadnt heard of it before - it’s a Yash Raj movie and stars John Abraham, Katrina Kaif and Neil Nitin Mukesh. The trailer starts off very Dostana-ish (minus the gayness, ofcourse) - two cool guys and one girl having a gala time in New York City. Then suddenly everything changes and we see 9-11 and torture scenes and then Neil Nitin Mukesh talks about 'our qam'. It was then that it struck me .... that maybe the Chopras were in a sort of deep slumber and one day, woke up to a movie market that had changed from DDLJ to Khosla Ka Ghosla. So they try to make a movie with the times (think Khuda Ke Liye), but cant help adding their magic secret success formula – candyfloss looks !!!

Which leads me to today’s movie – Rab Ne – and you can see the same theory at work. The honchos at Yash Raj studios read a market report – which says that the common man (‘Bheja Fry’) look is in, so lets put that angle in and set up the movie in a small town, but we will make Shahrukh Khan dance, add our special secret ingredient and ta-dah !!! Superhit !!

Unfortunately for the Chopras, movie audiences now have better taste and can separate actually good cinema from a wannabe. Yash Raj’s competency is stylish, glossy, escapist fare - and there is a good market for it, as Dostana proved. They should probably just concentrate on that.

And just to prove that I have nothing against Yash Raj movies, I confess that I am a sucker for feel-good, happy movies. I really liked Aaja Nachle and thought Tara Rum Pum was quite ok (and didn’t watch Laaga Chunari). But Rab Ne, even with its happy ending, has just too many things working against it. First being the ethereal love concept – ‘aap jisse pyar karte ho, usmein rab dikhta hai’. The notion that love is so pure and god-like is SOOOOO nonsense !!! Have these people ever actually been in love? In this age, love is about connecting with each other, clicking, or being on the same wavelength – whatever you call it. And its not just a big town phenomena – the days of falling in love, just by seeing a pretty face is long gone and everyone knows it. Everyone, except the Chopras, ofcourse.

The second is plot holes – the idea is to entertain, I get it – but can we have a little more sensible story please? Something which credits the viewers as having more intelligence than dumb goats - or sheep ? Its not like we do not like fantastical or outrageous storylines – we do. Om Shanti Om was an example of one. But the way the makers of Rab Ne try to convince you that its a non-fantasy, everyday love story just doesn’t hold. It feels complete like a complete eyewash.

The feeling of the me-too returns when you watch the retro “chalte chalte” song. “We can do what Farah Khan can do, and we can do it with better heroines” – but sorry Aditya, Farah does the stuff better. The self-referencing jokes work for the first couple of times, but they are far too many and there is only so many times a Dhoom gag will work. And arent there any other movies worth referencing ?

However there are some gems in the movie as well. The scene after the office party when Shahrukh thanks Anushka is very heartfelt and a scene Shahrukh should be proud of. And half a star is just for the ending credits with the commentary :) Anushka Sharma is a superb find I think – she is very confident and acts really well. Vinay Pathak is great as usual, but he doesn’t have much to do apart from act Shahrukh’s buddy.

But I cant help but wonder – how would the movie have been if it had Vinay Pathak in Shahrukh’s role ?