Friday, February 28, 2014

Review: Shaadi Ke Side Effects

Three Stars

Married People's Wrongs Are A Riot!

Mini Review:

Other people's marriages are funny to watch. But tempus is meant to fugit, and this movie needs a push off a cliff...

Main Review:

'Time Flies,' they say, 'When you're having fun...' But this movie is like a fly caught in an open jar of jam. You want to swat it and end the misery, but you don't want to throw away the jam.

Farhan Milkha Singh does a great job of running away from the word responsibility that accompanies the word 'marriage', and you empathise with him too. And you watch Vidya Momzilla Balan's every move with 'oh mah gawd' and 'so true' and 'i know someone exactly like her' at the back of your head.

You are drawn irresistibly in this vortex of marriage and other mistakes and you will hear uncomfortable laughs from many parts of the theater from people who wish they had the courage to escape from their Godzilla wives. But as the wise man says, 'No one can control Go-jiro. He go as he pleases. He come as he pleases.' This movie too is like Godzilla. You are awed by the destruction of everything rosy about marriages but it doesn't go away. The movie goes on and on and on until you wish you were like Farhan's football friends. Gone after ninety minutes.

Why is Bollywood stuck on the two hour plus format for movies? It is in this dragging that they start making mistakes. Characters come into this marriage and vanish - families, neighbors, even friends - all smoking guns that don't really fire. You wonder what happened to all these people. But the film is so busy moving from one joke scene into another that the laughs are all it seems to be aiming at. The last forty five minutes are a hastily written pukeworthy lesson on how you'd better like being responsible and practical. It's just gyaan given by a hero who smells of baby powder and diaper rash cream. You come away vowing to watch Farhaan in the shower scene from Rock On!  

Vidya Balan is at so much ease in her role, you ignore her omnipresent weight and watch her perform. Her look has been designed brilliantly by Jayati Bose and you wish someone like her would find clothes for all the extra large aunties who wander about malls wearing the most inappropriate chiffon kurtis a la once size zero Kareena Kapoor.

Of course you should watch the movie, married or no. Whether you are thinking of procreating or no. Especially if you have friends who have just been hitched and are waxing lyrical about their new life. It's like seeing a lemming for the first time. It must be a cute animal, no? It has friends, it probably parades in front of you, doing many cute tricks. But soon you want to play Warcraft or Assassin's Creed on your gadget and push the darned lemming off the cliff...

As someone gorgeous and still single said: This movie is like a Hindu wedding. So long, it is like living all seven lifetimes at one go.


  



   





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