Screen Test

Some movies are best left untouched. Sairat is one of them.   Dhadak is such a sorry remake of the terrific Marathi film that it does not even deserve a review. The lead actors are a misfit, the screenplay bereft of moments that leave any sort of impact and the music a poor copy of the original with laughable lyrics. The chemistry between the actors is non-existent and the core issue of caste and economic conflict, which plays out so beautifully in the original, is only a passing reference.  All that Dhadak does is give credence to a certain actor’s views on nepotism. It’s a showreel for the lead actress who has been presented with designer clothes and proper makeup, a far cry from the rough-but-opinionated Archie of Sairat . The lead actor shows promise, but cannot match up to the raw innocence of Parshya in Nagraj Manjule’s blockbuster.  As much as the makers deny that it is a remake (they've used the word adaptation) of Sairat , Dhadak tries to co...

Newspaper articles can be written with an angle. Books can take sides. And movies can be made with a slant. Sanju clearly has one: That everyone else, but the actor is responsible for his misdeeds. What the film tells us is that his drug addiction was because of the wrong company that he kept, keeping an AK-47 rifle (given to him by terrorist Abu Salem) in his car was to protect his family which was being threatened (although his father continued to do community work in the open) and his jail term and subsequent vilification was because of a vicious media trial.  There’s nothing wrong in making a movie trying to clean up the image of one of Indian cinema’s controversial personalities. But it has to be done with adequate depth and conviction. Rajkumar Hirani – believed to be one of the finest filmmakers of our times – falls woefully short on these fronts. And by using clichéd lines like ‘ kuch toh log kahenge ’ to refer to the adverse public opinion about the actor, he dil...