Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji does for Madhur Bhandarkar what his highly pretentious ‘overtly-hyped’ shallow films couldn’t; give him a successful directorial outing! Having said that let me warn you that Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji starts off as a corny comedy, but mellows into a sweet film.
A few in the industry felt Madhur might not be able to direct a commercial film; his ‘last commercial’ film Aan was a big disaster. Let me make it clear Madhur always made commercial films in the garb of supposedly serious, thought-provoking films; case in point the expose on fashion-industry, Fashion, which was nothing but a rehash of any 70’s or 80’s pot-boiler of ‘bechaari abala naari’!
Good to see that he has come clean off his pretentious set of films.
DTBHJ tells the story of a banker, Naren (Ajay Devgn) who is undergoing a divorce from his wife. He moves out and gets two PG’s, Abhay (Emraan Hashmi) and Milind (Omi Vaidya). Interestingly, all three fall in love and with love comes the set of problems.
Naren finds his calling in the bubbly and vivacious, June (Shazahn Padamsee), a new intern in the bank. Milind, an amateur poet works as a marriage counselor and falls in love with highly ambitious Gungun (Shraddha Das). While, the flirt Abhay falls for charming and calculative Niki (Shruti Haasan); step-daughter of the woman he is toy-boy of, Anu, (Tisca Chopra).
How their love stories traverse forms the narrative.
DTBHJ is simple; what lifts it, is a bit of work on characterizations; like the character of Niki; a heir to an empire, she is shown as a no-nonsense achiever, so you resign to cinematic liberty when she falls for Emraan’s character, but Niki’s final call makes her character very believable and plausible as there are such characters or for that matter Gungun, in a beautifully underplayed scene in a taxi, where Milind asks her if she didn’t get the role because of the casting-couch and the way she looks at him conveys a lot – is he nuts or what?
What rocks the movie:
Omi Vaidya, Shraddha Das, Tisca Chopra, Ajay Devgn and performances by almost everyone in the cast
Shruti Hassan looks ethereally beautiful and oozes exquisite charm. Absolutely wow!
A few genuinely funny moments; particularly the coffee sequence where Shruti underplays brilliantly to cut Emraan to size!
What chucks the movie
The 3 'actresses?' Madhur got for the last scene, I am sure there must be very good looking actresses waiting to work with Madhur!
A few genuinely corny moments in the 1st half
Music
VERDICT
The strength of Madhur Bhabdarkar’s DTBHJ is that it isn’t a shallow film unlike his highly pretentious films and low expectations from DTBHJ might just make you like the film. I feel its his only worthwhile film after Page 3 and Chandni Bar.
July 21 '10; the day Indian Film Industry got INDEPENDENT!