Film: Gori Tere Pyaar Mein
Starring: Imran Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor
Director: Punit Malhotra
Producer: Karan Johar, Hiroo Yash Johar
Banner: Dharma Productions
Music: Vishal- Shekhar
In the first-half they clash over idlis,
ideologies and idle chatter. Mismatched as they are, and we are
reminded twice that she is older, Kareena Kapoor-Khan and Imran Khan
trudge along cutely till mid-point after which the narrative shuffles
noisily into a village in Gujarat where it all falls apart.
You know a film is going wrong when the
lead pair just don't seem made for each other, not because that's the
way their role are written, but because the actors playing the
characters seem to belong to two different planets.
Someday producer Karan Johar can tell us
why he decided to cast the incandescent Kareena Kapoor with Imran Khan.
Not just in one but two of his productions within one year, both about a
a chirpy gregarious chick and a moneyed inhibited guy.
While researchers and theorists await
results on what this Khan and Kapoor (actually she's half a Khan too, so
going by his half-hearted presence they should have formed one complete
Khan club, but alas they don't) are doing together there is this film
going by the archaic and utterly uninspiring title of "Gori Tere Pyaar
Mein".
He is commit-phobic (like she was in
"Jab We Met"). She is a social activist. Rather, a loud caricature of a
social activist. What Shabana Azmi would have been if her speeches were
written by Karan Johar.
Kareena is dressed for the part and
seems to make all the right moves(and I am not talk about the moves in
those awfully infra-dig songs about the 'tooh', chewingum chaba ke, I
kid you not). But why do we get the feeling she cares as much for the
upkeep of the village and its gobar population as she did for the
political degeneration of apna bharat mahaan in "Satyagraha"?
Kareena carries the face of woman who
would rather be anywhere than where this vapid script puts her. A pity,
since her eyes and beauty can launch a thousand ships. In this film they
can't even launch a leaky paper boat.
This is the film where everything in sight sinks. The viewer's heart, to begin with.
What strikes you repeatedly is the sheer
nullity of the story.She loves to be passionate about everything to do
with the downtrodden. He couldn't care less about female foeticide,
child molestation, elevator rape, or whatever her next anti-exploitation
jehad may be.
Come to think of it, Kareena's missionary zeal could have been the stuff ribtickling satires are made of.
Tragically director Punit Malhotra seems
dead serious about his heroine's activism. Rather than becoming the
bemused bystander alongside the hero(who looks like the goofy Sunil Dutt
in "Khandaan" and "Padosan"), the script elects to go with the
heroine's solemn self-righteousness. So we are supposed to watch
Kareena's righteous indignation with a straight face.
We end up laughing at all the wrong
cues.The timing goes horribly awry as the film progresses. The
sanctimonious heroine's attempts to be funny and committed at the same
time reminds you of a restaurant that serves kebabs and pastas at the
cost of one meal.
This is a film that had the potential
for being genuinely funny and warm. It also has the very lovely Shradha
Kapoor trying hard to keep her inherent grace intact in a script that
manoeuvres through a string of antics based on cultural and economic
disparity. It squanders the satirical potential in trying to be cleverer
than the audience.
There is a prominently pickled
pre-interval moment where Imran Khan's under-committed character is
mock-urged by his kith and kin to run away from his marriage mandap.
It's a Tamilian marriage ritual, you see. Giggle.
Our hero Sree Ram (a.k.a Sridevi, for
some secretly funny reason) takes the mock-ritual seriously and flees
out of the marriage.That, you see the problem. That moment becomes
symptomatic of all the wrong turns that the script takes in trying to be
funny, savvy, sassy and smart. Moments that are meant to be bitingly
urbane and tongue-in-cheek end up being as flat as pancakes cooked for
breakfast served in the evening. A bridge built in an impoverished
village meant to be symbolic of the lead pair's differing
priorities,becomes a feeble attempt at profundity in a film that cannot
avoid shallowness.