"Dil Dhadakne Do" is a non-tragic version of Titanic - What happens when a dysfunctional family that never find time for each other land up in a cruise for ten days. And the problems that come from a lifetime of miscommunication and under-communication surface to the sea - until they get a life-saver, actuallly a life-boat to find happiness in a sea of unresolved puzzles. Zoya Akhtar weaves a story with too many characters and unwarranted adult scenes which make a not-so-perfect viewing in 165 minutes. Neither the audience nor the players in the movie have an escape route - because we are all at sea with a contrived tirade of pride and prejudice from a mechanical rich man's family led by Anil Kapoor. But for the stark message of the movie - Give love to your kids but also give them freedom to do what they want - and some remarkable performances by Anil Kapoor (father), Shefali Shah (mother), Priyanka Chopra (daughter) and Ranvir Singh (son), the movie crawls until a cameo performer Farhan Akhtar restores some sanity.
Zoya's strength is her characterisation - each artist gets his or her arclight performance but her weakness in the movie is to get too many characters mess with the main storyline of the Mehra family, it dilutes the intensity of the story. By making the family pet-dog Pluto talk about the story and the stereotypes presented in it through the voice of Aamkir Khan, Zoya may have scored a self-goal because it makes the film a documentary with comments from Aamir's voice with the caustic pen of Javed Akhtar. For a long time, you feel you are watching another Raju Hiran's film where relentless commentary runs in the background with subtextual messages and chatty scenes. What redeems this monotony, occasionally, is the background score by Shankar Ehsaan Loy and associates - it is mostly chords, violin and piano. The songs are a saving grace but come few and far in between - it is either an aberration when you don't expect or a rarity when you desperately need it, spacing is bad. The Punjabi Song in the second half is the only song that stays despite another impressive album from the trio music direcors. Cinematography stands out because this is again a film that is promoting cruise tourism, sixteen years after the film "Titanic" swept the world.
Despite a brutal portrayal of how the rich live, think and behave with one another, Zoya's characterisation shows gaps in understanding. Inconceivable that with so many friends invited on cruise, the son and daughter grow up with such emptiness and rudderlessness and without affection and understanding from parents. Neither do we find friends who can be sounding boards for each other. It is as if everybody is on their own trip of making it big and so full of themselves with never-ending vanity and disaffections. Whether such paradoxes in parenting exist in totality or is a figment of Zoya's fiction is unfathomable and surreal. Impossible that the mother loathes everything but has a stigma against divorce. Impractical for a rich kid to be forced into father's biusiness and not raise a moment of protest in so many years. Whether it resonates widely and whether it is credulous, one should ask the director and the story-writer - could there be greyness in some of the stereotypes that she typically shows as in her earlier films like ZNMD and LuckByChance. What she shows is a rich society that has taboos, doesn't talk turkey, traps their children in hopeless marriages and enslaves them in illiberal notions of misery while moving on in other aspects - that is the most incredulous aspect of the story - which is a surprise because Zoya invests well in her storylines with intelligence and plausible emotions. The fun part of the film is carried out by Ranvir Singh and Anushka Sharma in a sizzler of a romantic track that shows the chemistry between them. If only Zoya had a better editor and a story-writer with authentic sensibilities of the worlds being projected, and invested in entertainment, this film would have scored high. Now it is upto the audience to filter this low-emotion false imagery the way they want. Or, enjoy the beautiful visuals of Eurozone countries like Greece, Turkey and Spain on a cruise themselves - which is what the film anyway wants. Watchable but doesn't give you a high like "Zindagi Naa Milegi Doobaara". I would watch ZNMD or Titanic again anyday than this sober fare.
Rating: 3/5
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