Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017)

A movie or a story needs conflict; good v/s bad; right v/s wrong; fight v/s flight; so on and so forth, but the most prominent movie conflict, we as a viewer of 1980’s and 1990’s cinema had to endure was love v/s family. And believe me when I say that, it was unbearable.

What we saw every time was a nice meaning boy meeting a nice looking innocent girl, their initial bonding, hero inevitably rescuing heroine from a purse snatcher/ robber/ potential sexual offender (just take your pick) to be followed up by a romantic song.

Then begins the conflict of the story, Parents. The objections ranging from, rich girl poor boy; rich boy poor girl; different religion/cast/sect; family history (some uncle killed some other uncle/ someone ran away from pre arrange marriage) or any other factor standing in the way of perpetual love. Alas, same story every time, guess where Ekta Kapoor took inspiration from.

But things changed and now we have movies with different themes and stories with new kind of conflicts, like ‘Kattappa ne Bahubali ko kyon mara’, or ‘Uski keh ke loonga’ or ‘Risk to Spider man ko bhi lena padta hai, main to salesman hoon’ etc etc

But once in a while filmmakers get nostalgic and come up with old formula movies with new packaging like “Badrinath ki Dulhaniya”. So the question remains, do this movie gets public’s love? And the answer is, ‘yes, it does’. Now this gives birth to a new question, why?

Although the movie follows old tradition of love v/s family, but the makes were smart enough to incorporate contemporary issue of woman liberalization and their place in current society and particular in our homes. To convey a strong social message without getting preachy is a tricky thing and nobody does it better than Rajkumar Hirani, but in this case the director Shashank Khaitan performs a decent job.

First half of the movie is funny, with ample light moments; especially the scene on the bus is the cherry on the top. However the problem lies with the second half of the movie where suddenly the story changes its tempo and converts into a serious drama, the length of this part is the hindrance in the natural progression of the movie. The director takes its sweet time to establish the story which he could have easily done by reducing the time of the movie by let’s say 10 minutes. However in the later part the momentum returns and climax is entertaining.

Acting wise Varun and Alia have given competent performances, I would specially like to mention the role of elder brother of Varun Dhavan, he looks like the modern incarnation of Mohnish Bahl from a Suraj Barjatya movie. He and his wife are immensely likeable. Script and dialogues are good, music is soulful. In all, a nice movie to spend a holiday with family. Watchable.

Rating ***1/2