June 28, 2009

Sweet geeky Punjabis meet Barbara Cartland! How can that not be delightful? As usual I am late to this party, which normally would stop me from writing about it but since in this case I found the film so much more wonderful than most of my friends and blogging compadres did, I feel the need to bloble (blog+burble) away. Incidentally, I watched RNBDJ with my sister, who also loved it, and it helped to have each other’s company and input on the rare occasions (almost entirely at the end) where the hackles did rise.
I am not a fan of Adi Chopra’s; I know I’ve mentioned elsewhere here that I did not like DDLJ much at all. But I didn’t feel this was permeated to nearly the same annoying degree of condescending-men-know-best that his other films have been, thanks in large part to Taani’s character (very nicely acted by Anushka Sharma); but also in large part thanks to the characters of Suri/Raj and Bobby Khosla (also well acted by Shah Rukh Khan and Vinay Pathak). All three are so patently ineffective at being that sort of paternalistic man that it is a joy to watch Suri’s bumbling but well-intentioned efforts to win Taani’s heart succeed—and succeed precisely because he is inept at “macho.”
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January 10, 2008

When I first heard about this film I was excited, because—as you may have figured out by now—I love Hindi films from the 50’s and 60’s, and have devoured every biography on every personality from that era that I can find. Also I think Sudhir Mishra is a good director, and Shantanu Moitra was doing the music; his songs for Parineeta were as close to the quality of old film music as most modern film music gets.
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September 3, 2007
This movie is owned by Vinay Pathak. He is just fantastic as Bharat Bhushan, a tax auditor with no social skills and a penchant for singing old film songs at the drop of a hat. But he is ably supported by Rajat Kapoor (whom I last saw as the creepy pedophile uncle in Monsoon Wedding) as Ranjeet Thadani, an arrogant, self-absorbed music studio executive.
Ranjeet is married to Sheetal (Sarika), a singer. He has a standing Friday night dinner date with some of his friends where they bring an “idiot” they’ve met to compete in a “talent” competition. The competition among the friends is really to see who has found the biggest loser of the week. Sheetal doesn’t approve of this mainstay in Ranjeet’s life but he refuses to give it up. Bharat is brought to Ranjeet’s attention by a car salesman friend who has been subjected to Bharat’s attentions on a bus trip from Pune (yes, Bharat is singing to him even though he is clearly trying to talk on the phone):

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