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Release date:
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October 22, 2015
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Director:
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Vikas Bahl
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Cast:
Language:
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Alia Bhatt,
Shahid Kapoor, Pankaj Kapur, Sushma Seth, Sanah Kapoor, Sanjay Kapoor, Vikas
Verma
Hindi
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The road to cinematic
boredom is paved with grand intentions.
There are moments in Shaandaar when you can almost imagine what writer-director Vikas
Bahl was hoping to achieve during the conceptualisation of this project. Like those
scenes in which Jagjinder
Joginder (Shahid Kapoor) and Alia Arora (Alia Bhatt) read each other’s
dreams. Or when Shahid, Alia, Pankaj Kapur, Vikas Verma and debutant Sanah
Kapoor join forces for an argument via the song Senti wali mental – the sets are delicious, the choreography is
imaginative, the music is fun and the lyrics sparkle with each character’s convictions.
This then is what the
film could have been: an unusual blend of Wes Anderson’s whimsy, Baz Luhrmann’s over-the-top, luxurious fantasia and Manmohan Desai’s emotion, zest and verve.
Sadly, Shaandaar works only in bits and pieces.
It has its heart in the right place as is evident from the messages it tries to
convey – about stereotypical definitions of beauty, adoption (some
well-intentioned misfiring there), children making their own life choices, the
superficiality of the happiness money can buy, and the pursuit of both
happiness and wealth. It is also sporadically funny. The rest seems lost
somewhere in the recesses of Vikas and his co-writers Anvita Dutt and Chaitally
Parmar’s minds, like an inside joke floating around perhaps among those clouds
that inhabit Alia’s and Jagjinder’s dreams in the story.
It breaks the heart to
say this since Vikas directed last year’s best Bollywood film, Queen, which he co-wrote with Anvita,
Chaitally, Parveez Shaikh and actress Kangna Ranaut herself. Queen was brilliant. Shaandaar, on the other hand, struggles
from the word go.
The story is set in a
castle in the English countryside where two wealthy Indian families gather for
a destination wedding. The Punjabi Aroras’ overweight daughter Isha (Sanah) is
set to marry the Sindhi body-flaunting gym enthusiast Robin Fandwani (Vikas).
She is a nice girl who loves her dad (Pankaj), her adopted sister Alia and good
food. He is an egotistical, protein-shake-swilling twit who loves himself.
Their union is being pushed primarily by the Arora family’s matriarch, Isha’s
grandmother (Sushma Seth), to save her clan from bankruptcy. In the run-up to D-day,
Alia gets romantically involved with Jagjinder who is their wedding planner.
Going by standard
practice in mainstream Bollywood, you might assume that the film revolves mainly
around Alia and Shahid’s characters. It does not. There are many sub-stories
within this story, and that’s the first step at which Shaandaar falters. Ensemble scripts require a great deal of
directorial and writing skill to keep us equally involved with all the
characters even as the spotlight continuously shifts from one to the other. Shaandaar cannot pull that off. Each time it focuses on Alia
and Jagjinder, Isha recedes into the background; each time it moves to Isha and
Robin, the other two seem to fade away; and so on. The result is an erratic,
bumpy narrative.
The occasional, genuinely
comedic portions are pulled down by laboured efforts to be cool and humourous elsewhere.
The Sindhis in the film for instance – gold-swathed, money-obsessed loud mouths
– are caricatures, yet not unabashedly over-done enough to be funny. Karan
Johar’s cameo is contrived (KJo leering at a male star is a tired joke that really
really needs to be retired). And what were those panties doing on Alia’s plate?
No one tells us so it’s fair to assume that that lingerie’s only purpose was to
contribute an intriguing element to the film’s trailer.
In such a scenario, it’s
hard to analyse the acting. The cast is talented, but there are no stand-out performances.
Since Shahid delivered a career best in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider just last year, this is proof – if any was needed – that no
actor is better than the written material at hand. At a couple of places, it
even seems as though Alia – usually a sparkler – loses interest in the film.
Still, let it be placed
on the record that Sushma Seth looks regal, and Vikas Verma and Sanah are promising.
I enjoyed Vikas’ dancing in Senti wali
mental and his willingness to make a fool of himself on screen because that
was a requirement of the role. Sanah – Shahid’s half sister – has a warm,
likeable personality and she holds her own in the presence of established
stars.
Let it also be placed on
the record that everything and everyone in Shaandaar
looks pretty.
That’s it. Team Shaandaar is clearly aiming at a certain
quirkiness that it fails to achieve for the most part. In fact, the animated
sequences grow tiresome once it becomes clear that the film has more style than
substance. The basic plot and other-worldly look suggest a nod to old European
fairytales, but Shaandaar doesn’t go
all out in that direction either. And the strand about the plus-sized Isha’s
self-esteem, well meaning though it is, is put in the shade by Sharat
Katariya’s consistently heart-warming film Dum Laga Ke Haisha that was released early this year.
There was a smoothness
to Queen that indicated great
teamwork. Shaandaar, on the other
hand, feels like patchwork. Take that scene in which a gay man comes out of the
closet before his relatives. It leads to a sweetly amusing response from the
family that is promptly followed by a moment of stereotyping in which he aims a
gun at someone with the limpest wrist ever seen in Bollywood. It’s as though two
separate mindsets were operating within that idea.
Well, never mind. I
loved Queen so much that I plan to
pretend to myself that Shaandaar
never happened. Until your next film then, Vikas…
Rating
(out of five): *1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U/A
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Running time:
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144 minutes
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