From the opening credit itself you will understand that this movie is hugely inspired from the 1995 classic "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge". Even the title of the movie also proves that. Story starts with Kavya Pratap Singh (Alia Bhatt) who lives in a village of Ambala with her parents, divorced sister and a lot of other typical Punjabi family stereotype relatives like biji and praji etc. She is about to marry a NRI guy Angad (Siddharth Shukla) who is his father's friend's son. Just one month before her marriage she goes to Delhi to attend her friend's engagement and to buy a designer lehanga for her wedding. Here she meets with Rakesh alias Humpty Sharma (Varun Dhawan) the only son of a bookstall owner. Humpty and Kavya becomes friends during some casual meetings which finally turns into love. But Kavya's marriage is already fixed with someone else so she comes back to her village sacrificing her love. Humpty follows her to her village just to win the heart of her family members so that he can marry her. What happened finally is known to all whoever has seen "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge".
It is very clear from the beginning that the story has nothing new to tell. In such cases the screenplay writer has the responsibility to present the same old story in refreshing way. As the screenplay writer Shashank Khaitan has been successful to perform this responsibility but partially. The first half is quite engaging and funny but the energy level drops in the second half when the story tries to be serious and emotional which doesn't suit the mood of the film. But after sometime the fun element comes back with the introduction of Kavya's would be groom Angad. The last 10 minutes of the film are the most boring part as the climax looks very much stretched as everyone knows what will happen finally so there is no point to waste so much time to reach to that point. there are some scenes which have been literally lifted from "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge" but still it can be said that it is not a scene by scene remake rather it is a modern day representation of Raj and Simran's love story. Another weak point of the script is most of the characters are too much cliched.
But all the shortcomings of the script and story has been compensated with the witty and funny dialogues written by the director and screenplay writer Shashank Khaitan himself.
As a director Shashank Khaitan has shown lots of promise in his debut movie. He has chosen a story which has been told so many times earlier but he has still managed to bring freshness to it. There is some engaging factor in the representation of the story and that shows that Shashank Khaitan is a good story teller.
No matter how cliche their characters are both the leading actors Varun Dhawan and Alia
Bhatt have brought life to their characters with their fantastic performance. It is true that it is not their career best roles and they have played such characters earlier too but still the audience will feel connected with the characters of Humpty and Kavya. Both Varun and Alia have grown up a lot from their debut movie together and their on screen chemistry is crackling. The only problem with Varun Dhawan is he needs to act better in the emotional scenes but he has filled up that gap with his excellent comic timing and superb dancing skills. Once again Alia Bhatt has proved that she is the future of Bollywood. She looks good , dances well and of course acts well too.
Among the supporting cast the actors Sahil Vaid and Gaurav Pandey who have played the characters of Humpty's friends Poplu and Shonty will surely win everyone's heart. Watch them in the scenes where they starts dancing to some popular Bollywood songs in drunken condition. Asutosh Rana has made a good comeback as Kavya's father. Siddharth Shukla who is a very popular face on TV has made a confident debut but he does not have much scope to perform, rather more stress has been given to his well toned body and fitness. Probably because of his TV popularity he was a part of the film promotions but his screen time is very less and his onscreen character is less significant.
The music is definitely a weak point of this film. A rom-com always deserves some beautiful as well as popular songs. Here the only song which is good and has been used well in the story is "Samjhawan". Apart from that the other popular track is "Saturday Saturday" but this song has been used in the end credits so it doesn't add much value to the film. The rest of the songs are neither good nor catchy enough to be popular. As a result it looks like there are too many songs which has been forced in the movie. There are two engagement songs "D se Dance" and "Daingad Daingad" but none of them is popular, in such case one of them could have been easily edited out.The only saving grace is that the songs have been choreographed very well and the credit goes to the choreographers Remo D'souza , Ahmed Khan and Chinni Prakash. Also the good dancing skills of Varun Dhawan has worked in favor of the choreographers.
Overall the movie happily pays tribute to the classic "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge" and it proudly accepts its inspiration. it never tries to pretend that it is original rather it always says it is "100% original fake". If you are a fan of DDLJ then try its modern day version too. Also you can watch it to enjoy the funny dialogues and the energetic performance of the leading cast.
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