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Release date:
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June 9, 2017
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Director:
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Dinesh Vijan
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Cast:
Language:
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Sushant Singh
Rajput, Kriti Sanon, Jim Sarbh, Varun Sharma, Cameos: Deepika Padukone and
Rajkummar Rao
Hindi
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Let’s get this question out of
the way right at the start: Raabta is
not particularly a copy of the Tollywood hit Magadheera. If you have been following news around the week’s new
Hindi film release, you will know that Telugu producer Allu Aravind had sent a
legal notice to the makers of Raabta
on seeing their trailer, alleging plagiarism of his 2009 venture directed by
S.S. Rajamouli, starring Ram Charan and Kajal Aggarwal. Now that Raabta is out, Aravind would be well
advised to avoid associating his film with this one – because whatever Magadheera’s follies may have been, it is
not guilty of Raabta’s foremost
failing: a complete lack of imagination.
It is possible that Raabta’s writers Siddharth-Garima got
the initial inspiration for their story from Rajamouli’s film. Or maybe they
did not. The truth is this project has no new ideas.
Perhaps they took the genre –
reincarnation drama – literally. Making a film on rebirth does not mean
grabbing a bunch of ingredients already used in a bunch of Indian films across
languages, chucking them into a wok and tossing them around to create what you
think you could fool people into believing is your own baby, your own recipe.
From its opening scenes right till the closing song ‘n’ dance routine
accompanying the end credits, from its basic plotline to its writing and directorial
treatment, Raabta is bathed in déjà
vu.
This is one of the most
unoriginal Hindi films I have seen all year.
The first half of Raabta is devoted to the young and
sprightly Punjabis-in-Budapest, Shiv Kakkar (played by Sushant Singh Rajput) and
Saira Singh (Kriti Sanon). A banker newly arrived in Europe, he is busy
painting the town red when he chances upon her, a beautiful Indian chocolatier.
He stalks her. She allows him
into her flat on the day of their very first meeting despite being somewhat
thrown off by his disturbing behaviour. He stalks her more (because
conventional wisdom dictates that Bollywood heroines do not deserve to be
courted with respect and sensitivity). She falls for him. Because? C’mon dumbo,
that’s what Bollywood heroines do.
The only thing slightly different
in this mix – if you have not seen other reincarnation films – is that she
feels an inexplicable connection to him going beyond chemistry and
compatibility, and related to the nightmares she has been seeing revolving
around drowning and hazy human figures. We naturally guess that their bond is
linked to those dreams. Hence the words from the title track, “kucch toh hai tujhse raabta” (I clearly
have some sort of connection with you) and the title itself, which is Urdu for
“connection”.
There is a certain cliched
concept of ‘modern’, ‘youthful’ romance that has plagued commercial Indian
cinema in recent years, epitomised by Mani Ratnam’s OK Kanmani in Tamil and Aditya Chopra’s Befikre in Hindi last year. You can add Raabta to that list. In all these films, the road to falling in
love is lined with the same old milestones packaged in gloss: contrived
conflicts, youngsters brimming with artificially scaled up energy while a
frothy song plays in the background, doing stuff the filmmakers clearly
consider cute (such as giving each other stupid, dangerous dares, kissing on
parapets where they could end up tipping over and falling into a river, and
more).
It is natural to wonder: do these
people ever talk like normal people? When do they get to know each other, to
really fall in love?
Their ‘liberalism’, by the way,
ends at having pre-marital sex. Before Shiv’s icky persistence with Saira in Raabta, we witness him trivialising white
women much like Ranveer Singh’s character in Befikre and so many other Hindi film men before them.
So although Rajput and Sanon are
both charismatic, sweet and good looking, and director of photography Martin
Preiss lays picture-postcard visuals across their story, they cannot save the
film from its been-there-done-that feel.
The first half is stretched to
breaking point to create suspense over the explanation for Saira’s dreams. The
plot takes too long to get to the kookie liquor baron Zakir Merchant (played by
a hammy Jim Sarbh). Once it does so, the back story (shown only post-interval)
involving his past life with Saira and Shiv’s earlier avatars has little flesh.
The special effects in this portion are impressive, but there is not enough of
that waterfall, those fights and ancient habitations to recommend Raabta. An unrecognisable Rajkummar Rao
is completely wasted in a cameo here.
It takes a great deal of writing
skill to make a rational viewer enjoy a film on reincarnation, magical fantasy
or the paranormal without feeling foolish. For one, Raabta gets dull quite quickly. It also makes the rebirth story
sound asinine.
To makes things worse, the three
leads here are all delivering self-consciously written film dialogues, rather
than normal human lines. If conversations pre-interval are trying to sound
cool, post-interval they are trying to sound grand but fall flat.
Raabta’s music is as recycled as the
screenplay, and is credited to Pritam’s company JAM8 because he reportedly did
not want to lend his name to a film that wanted to rehash old songs.
When Pritam, who has often been
accused of plagiarism, makes a point about fresh content in your film, you
should know you are in trouble. Ik vaari
aa (sung by Arijit Singh, with music by Pritam and lyrics by Amitabh
Bhattacharya) is pleasant. The other two tracks worth mentioning here are
resurrections of already successful numbers, used here in a trite fashion: Sanon
and Rajput dance to Main tera boyfriend,
alongside the closing credits, and the title track – picturised on a
surprisingly ineffective even if gorgeous-as-always Deepika Padukone performing
a tepid dance in an awkward outfit – is a remix of the lovely composition of
the same name by Pritam (with largely different lyrics) in Agent Vinod. Both songs are fun and hummable here, but pallid in
comparison with the originals.
Dinesh Vijan’s filmography as a
producer includes the memorable Being Cyrus,
Love Aaj Kal and this year’s Hindi Medium, in addition to Badlapur
that has the distinction of featuring one of Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s best
performances in a career filled with brilliance. It is hard to imagine why Vijan
chose to make his directorial debut with this unremarkable enterprise in which Sushant
Singh Rajput, Kriti Sanon and pretty visuals are all drowned out by tedium.
Rating
(out of five stars): *
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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154 minutes 40 seconds
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
Posters
courtesy: (1) IMDB for Raabta
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