For the people who went gaga- and understandably so- over Vikas Bahl’s brilliant ‘Queen’ last year, the very trailers- hinting at a purely, unashamedly mainstream entertainer- must have been a hell of a disappointment. We loved ‘Queen’ for how real and relatable it all was, even with the raunchy comic mayhem it presented to us in spades and while a valid argument can be made that there is no point comparing different genres, we can expect at least some basic level of wit, insight, or even splendid cheek from a director who even made us care about a pole dancer without merely leering at her.
And yet, while we never expected a film about devilish matriarchs, gaudy in-laws and spunky girls going skinny dipping at night to be particularly insightful, we at least wanted it to be a lot of fun.
There is none of this in Bahl’s ‘Shaandaar’- a film, which promises from its title, to be a truly grand affair but alas, it is only grand in the way most Karan Johar or Sooraj Barjatya films are- expensively packaged and lavishly produced, crammed with racial and gender stereotypes and often enthusiastic for more than a little bit of ribaldry and utterly plotless. Sure, there is a bit of genuine fun to be found here and there, which remind us of the director’s flair for laugh-out-loud slapstick but in terms of the larger picture, this is just a grand waste.
It begins with some fair amount of promise, though a terribly ludicrous animated track is pretty awkward to sit through. We are introduced to a large and cozy all-Punjabi castle somewhere in the misty English countryside where a wizened, wheelchair-bound mother rules the roost, her grown-up, aging sons all dutifully bowing before her. One of them is Bipin Arora, played with typical nonplussed perfection by Pankaj Kapur, who is all set to wed off his elder daughter Isha, refreshingly one with a spine- to the heir of a gaudily rich family called as the Fundwanis in a marriage of mutual lucrative benefit. The younger daughter- an adopted brat by the name of Alia (Alia Bhatt)- is a feisty little thing with little patience for decorum and just as the stage is set for the wedding to proceed, there enters a hero, as if the entire film was merely awaiting his arrival.
Bahl and writer Anvita Dutt start aiming for wishful thinking right from the first scene but what really nails these early moments promising are the snappy moments of humor that the film gets admirably right. The afore-mentioned matriarch asks aloud about her parathas after a liveried crew of waiters and butlers have already doled out Eggs Benedict on the breakfast table while a mother continues to feed the ostensibly plump bride-to-be confectionery as elaborate as the décor around her. Meanwhile the gold-clad Fundwanis wield golden pistols and cars and the groom-to-be further on carries a giant carton of whey protein and frequently flaunts his ‘eight and a half’ pack abs to hilarious effect.
It is these little quirks, both perceptive and goofy, that amuse frequently but it is one thing to pack in laughs into what can be an endearingly entertaining romp and another to rely completely on the whimsy to drive the proceedings. Bahl opts for the latter option and much to ‘Shaandaar’s detriment, the cartoonish, over-the-top tone often overshadows any genuine shred of sincerity in the proceedings.
Our hero here is the impossibly slick and cocky Jagjinder Joginder (Shahid Kapur), a wedding planner who knows his way to win many a heart and who falls for Alia in the most predictable way possible- but it is in their unfairly secondary romance that the film actually diverts from its constant babble of caricatures; to be honest, they feel like the only two real people in a film flooded with gimmicks. Their chemistry sparkles and more could have been made of their scenes together. But while there are memorable bits- of sleeplessly frolicking away in the nights with biscuits and milk as well as with pillow-fights and Fevicol-most of the romance is relegated to the background, except maybe for a sublime song shot in black-and-white which is like a point of calm after so much chaos around.
The problem is that this chaos makes little sense. The caricatures stay as caricatures and never develop into full-etched characters and in the process, the narrative turns loopy and confused. There is so much potential between the relentlessly frothy silliness in the story for some intriguing conflict, some genuine little twist or turn that can take the film on a starkly different path. Midway, we learn of Alia’s illegitimate parentage and there are some hints as to why Jagjinder remains so enigmatically sketchy but ‘Shandaar’ airbrushes these little glints of reality- all these things are conveniently shoved aside in face of the fun.
And there is not much of that either. There are times when the gags work wonders and keep the audiences in splits but after a time, the sheer farcical tone of the film begins to grate on the nerves. An unabashedly hilarious scene with hallucinogenic mushrooms keeps the laughs rolling but is somewhat ruined by how long does Bahl and Dutt stretch the same thing- still, a moment in which Sanjay Kapoor’s delightfully over-the-top Fundwani searches desperately for his ‘legs’ had me cracking up ridiculously. A pet frog is a cute little touch in a scene of some casual romantic banter but it could have been used in a Disney-like in-joke of frog princes and it remains only as a fanciful idea.
After a time,the silliness is not just confined to the jokes- it becomes a part of the narrative itself. And while there is something to be said about a film in which the said matriarch dies because of sneezing and afterwards, everyone breathes a sigh of amused relief, there is not just enough narrative focus to warrant it all to be particularly amusing.
What works are bits and pieces where the film gets filthy-rich digs right and spot-on. Lavishly dressed grown-ups fuss over the non-vegetarian spread during lunch, the in-laws refuse to break the marriage proceedings lest there will not be even money to buy whey protein and a pair of girls chatter in abbreviations about everything conceivable. There is yet another chance for ‘Shaandaar’ to make pointed soliloquies about the fake nature of wealth and affluence and towards the hurried and half-baked climax, we see all the characters shedding their expensive skins (including the ceremony pandit, who confesses being a cricket commentator) in a moment which comes closest to Bahl’s taste for the kind of comedy that scalds as much as sets the audience rolling on the aisles. But without the dramatic heft to make it all worthy, even the most well-timed jokes in the film lack the punch. A Karan Johar cameo is further shoehorned into the film but it lacks purpose and feels like some more of self-indulgence.
The actors are all perfectly in place but there is curiously little that they do to improve the general air of sugar-coated silliness around. Kapur and Bhatt are endearingly decent in their young portrayals while Pankaj Kapur does verbal comedy quite deftly with his bewildered expressions and that signature drawl of exasperation and fatherly concern but is undermined by the ridiculous decisions that his character has to take. Sushma Seth plays the old dowager-cum-villainess with aplomb but has curiously little to do in the contrived second-half and the rest just get on with the gags without any real level of emotional involvement.
The first half remains pretty breezy, if quite flaky but the second half is where the real problems emerge-character development often compromised for narrative pacing and with a particularly distasteful qawwali, the tone almost hits the unforgivable tenor of one of the early 2000s Yash Chopra productions (think ‘Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai’).
We all lauded Bahl for the freshness that he brought to a familiar premise- the kind of nuanced storytelling that made everything so accessible and for his flair for visual cheek and quirk which made that fine film such a gem. Unfair comparisons aside, ‘Shaandaar’ might have been a terrific romp in itself- a film which would have lampooned the very idea of big, fat Indian weddings and while you could spot some of that intention in the film’s patches of well-timed humor, the noisy silliness often overwhelms the satirical tone and undercuts whatever insight we might have got. Other than the visual grandeur all around- the impressive castle, the countryside vistas and a couple of peppy Amit Trivedi songs-, there is admittedly some lovely quirk in between- and Bahl even beautifully equates his romantic yet helplessly insomniac leads falling asleep to all the creatures cuddling up for slumber. But for most part, this is an utterly ‘Shaandaar’ waste of potential.
My Rating- 2 Stars out of 5.
And yet, while we never expected a film about devilish matriarchs, gaudy in-laws and spunky girls going skinny dipping at night to be particularly insightful, we at least wanted it to be a lot of fun.
There is none of this in Bahl’s ‘Shaandaar’- a film, which promises from its title, to be a truly grand affair but alas, it is only grand in the way most Karan Johar or Sooraj Barjatya films are- expensively packaged and lavishly produced, crammed with racial and gender stereotypes and often enthusiastic for more than a little bit of ribaldry and utterly plotless. Sure, there is a bit of genuine fun to be found here and there, which remind us of the director’s flair for laugh-out-loud slapstick but in terms of the larger picture, this is just a grand waste.
It begins with some fair amount of promise, though a terribly ludicrous animated track is pretty awkward to sit through. We are introduced to a large and cozy all-Punjabi castle somewhere in the misty English countryside where a wizened, wheelchair-bound mother rules the roost, her grown-up, aging sons all dutifully bowing before her. One of them is Bipin Arora, played with typical nonplussed perfection by Pankaj Kapur, who is all set to wed off his elder daughter Isha, refreshingly one with a spine- to the heir of a gaudily rich family called as the Fundwanis in a marriage of mutual lucrative benefit. The younger daughter- an adopted brat by the name of Alia (Alia Bhatt)- is a feisty little thing with little patience for decorum and just as the stage is set for the wedding to proceed, there enters a hero, as if the entire film was merely awaiting his arrival.
Bahl and writer Anvita Dutt start aiming for wishful thinking right from the first scene but what really nails these early moments promising are the snappy moments of humor that the film gets admirably right. The afore-mentioned matriarch asks aloud about her parathas after a liveried crew of waiters and butlers have already doled out Eggs Benedict on the breakfast table while a mother continues to feed the ostensibly plump bride-to-be confectionery as elaborate as the décor around her. Meanwhile the gold-clad Fundwanis wield golden pistols and cars and the groom-to-be further on carries a giant carton of whey protein and frequently flaunts his ‘eight and a half’ pack abs to hilarious effect.
It is these little quirks, both perceptive and goofy, that amuse frequently but it is one thing to pack in laughs into what can be an endearingly entertaining romp and another to rely completely on the whimsy to drive the proceedings. Bahl opts for the latter option and much to ‘Shaandaar’s detriment, the cartoonish, over-the-top tone often overshadows any genuine shred of sincerity in the proceedings.
Our hero here is the impossibly slick and cocky Jagjinder Joginder (Shahid Kapur), a wedding planner who knows his way to win many a heart and who falls for Alia in the most predictable way possible- but it is in their unfairly secondary romance that the film actually diverts from its constant babble of caricatures; to be honest, they feel like the only two real people in a film flooded with gimmicks. Their chemistry sparkles and more could have been made of their scenes together. But while there are memorable bits- of sleeplessly frolicking away in the nights with biscuits and milk as well as with pillow-fights and Fevicol-most of the romance is relegated to the background, except maybe for a sublime song shot in black-and-white which is like a point of calm after so much chaos around.
The problem is that this chaos makes little sense. The caricatures stay as caricatures and never develop into full-etched characters and in the process, the narrative turns loopy and confused. There is so much potential between the relentlessly frothy silliness in the story for some intriguing conflict, some genuine little twist or turn that can take the film on a starkly different path. Midway, we learn of Alia’s illegitimate parentage and there are some hints as to why Jagjinder remains so enigmatically sketchy but ‘Shandaar’ airbrushes these little glints of reality- all these things are conveniently shoved aside in face of the fun.
And there is not much of that either. There are times when the gags work wonders and keep the audiences in splits but after a time, the sheer farcical tone of the film begins to grate on the nerves. An unabashedly hilarious scene with hallucinogenic mushrooms keeps the laughs rolling but is somewhat ruined by how long does Bahl and Dutt stretch the same thing- still, a moment in which Sanjay Kapoor’s delightfully over-the-top Fundwani searches desperately for his ‘legs’ had me cracking up ridiculously. A pet frog is a cute little touch in a scene of some casual romantic banter but it could have been used in a Disney-like in-joke of frog princes and it remains only as a fanciful idea.
After a time,the silliness is not just confined to the jokes- it becomes a part of the narrative itself. And while there is something to be said about a film in which the said matriarch dies because of sneezing and afterwards, everyone breathes a sigh of amused relief, there is not just enough narrative focus to warrant it all to be particularly amusing.
What works are bits and pieces where the film gets filthy-rich digs right and spot-on. Lavishly dressed grown-ups fuss over the non-vegetarian spread during lunch, the in-laws refuse to break the marriage proceedings lest there will not be even money to buy whey protein and a pair of girls chatter in abbreviations about everything conceivable. There is yet another chance for ‘Shaandaar’ to make pointed soliloquies about the fake nature of wealth and affluence and towards the hurried and half-baked climax, we see all the characters shedding their expensive skins (including the ceremony pandit, who confesses being a cricket commentator) in a moment which comes closest to Bahl’s taste for the kind of comedy that scalds as much as sets the audience rolling on the aisles. But without the dramatic heft to make it all worthy, even the most well-timed jokes in the film lack the punch. A Karan Johar cameo is further shoehorned into the film but it lacks purpose and feels like some more of self-indulgence.
The actors are all perfectly in place but there is curiously little that they do to improve the general air of sugar-coated silliness around. Kapur and Bhatt are endearingly decent in their young portrayals while Pankaj Kapur does verbal comedy quite deftly with his bewildered expressions and that signature drawl of exasperation and fatherly concern but is undermined by the ridiculous decisions that his character has to take. Sushma Seth plays the old dowager-cum-villainess with aplomb but has curiously little to do in the contrived second-half and the rest just get on with the gags without any real level of emotional involvement.
The first half remains pretty breezy, if quite flaky but the second half is where the real problems emerge-character development often compromised for narrative pacing and with a particularly distasteful qawwali, the tone almost hits the unforgivable tenor of one of the early 2000s Yash Chopra productions (think ‘Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai’).
We all lauded Bahl for the freshness that he brought to a familiar premise- the kind of nuanced storytelling that made everything so accessible and for his flair for visual cheek and quirk which made that fine film such a gem. Unfair comparisons aside, ‘Shaandaar’ might have been a terrific romp in itself- a film which would have lampooned the very idea of big, fat Indian weddings and while you could spot some of that intention in the film’s patches of well-timed humor, the noisy silliness often overwhelms the satirical tone and undercuts whatever insight we might have got. Other than the visual grandeur all around- the impressive castle, the countryside vistas and a couple of peppy Amit Trivedi songs-, there is admittedly some lovely quirk in between- and Bahl even beautifully equates his romantic yet helplessly insomniac leads falling asleep to all the creatures cuddling up for slumber. But for most part, this is an utterly ‘Shaandaar’ waste of potential.
My Rating- 2 Stars out of 5.
