Dhadak leaves much to be desired

Like all great love stories, Dhadak ends as a tragedy. Which is not to say that it is a great love story. Replicating, almost all the conventions of a love-at-first-sight-doom-at-a-later-stage yarn Dhadak makes all the right noises (includes a super-melodious title song) and is still unable to create a concordant musical symphony.A film about honour killing, it is aptly an honourable failure, giving us some of what is desirable, but largely leaving much to be desired.What goes wrong? Well, for one this Karan Johar production has resolved to do a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai on Sairat, the hardhitting Marathi film on which Dhadak is based.The remake extracts all the juice from the original and then squanders it in irrelevant plot conversions. The changes made in the original made no sense to me.The cricket match that opens Sairat turns into an eating competition in Dhadak so clumsily shot I wondered if director Shahank Khaitan had decided to turn Sairat into a comedy.Before I could exclaim, ‘Burp Re Burp’ after the eating contest big-time passion erupts between the rich politician Ashutosh Rana’s naughty daughter Parthavi (Janhvi Kapoor) and the affable boy next door Madhukar (Ishaan Khattar).Ishaan is all over the place wooing and wowing the girl with all the tricks up his sleeve. He is like a peacock in Udaipur trying to impress his partner during the mating season.And very effective at that Ishaan carries the film which is stricken by underwhelming performances. The heroine’s docile mother in Sairat left a mark in spite of her limited dialogues. Her counterpart in this film is stuck with her artificial anxieties and fake makeup.Janhvi Kapoor has a quiet charm about her but she has a long way to go. She is effective in the scenes after the elopement when she has to cope with ‘poverty’ and ‘hardships’. That is, Karan Johar’s concept of poverty which means the couple has to slum it out in Kolkata with a kindly Bengali couple serving as their guardian originals.This brings me to the cinematography. Vishnu Rao shoots Udaipur and Kolkata like entries on tourist brochure. A mediocre film like Lion captured the brutal dispassion of The City Of Joy.Dhadak changes characters as if they were in Sairat, it was a benevolent Auntyji from the slums who gave the on-the-run couple a room and respite. The rawness and immediacy of the original is completely lost in the remake as the protagonists seem to subscribe to the plot ideas from Sairat without being able to fit them into the environment provided in the remake.The finale which shocked everyone in Sairat here seems force-fed to serve up a brutal lesson on honour killing. If I say, nothing in the film prepares us for the gruesome ending I don’t mean it as a compliment. If Dhadak is still watchable in parts it’s because Ishaan Khattar is constantly injecting his exuberant conviction into every scene.He doesn’t question why things are what they are, he trapezes across the tides of designer wear-and-tear hoping the doomed love story would finally make sense.Tragically, it doesn’t, the situations and incidents seem way too artificial in this south Bombay version of a Marathi film that changed the course of regional cinema. Dhadak changes nothing. It aspires to serenade the status quo with the sole purpose of launching Sridevi’s daughter.But why Sairat? Karan Johar could’ve chose any story. This is a pointless remake, more remarkable for what it fails to achieve with the original than what it actually manages to put forward. – IANSAamir to be chief guest at Indian Screenwriters ConferenceBollywood actor-producer Aamir Khan will be the chief guest at the fifth edition of the Indian Screenwriters Conference (ISC), themed on ‘Where Mind Is Without Fear.Organised by Screenwriters Association, the event will focus on the challenges facing Indian screenwriters today, read a statement.The biennial conference will be held from August 1-3, 2018 at St Andrews Auditorium, Bandra.Veteran journalist Vinod Dua will deliver the keynote address at the inaugural day of the conference, where a large number of screenwriters and established professionals from the film and TV industries, as well as the digital media, will be present.Panels like; Writers Vs Producers – Can they never be allies?, Writing without fear – Is a writer’s mind free of fears?, Web of digital writing: Fearless of Frivolous, Has the daily soap format reached its dead end? and Southern Waves, will see some of the brightest minds in the business share their thoughts.Siddharth Roy Kapur, Akshat Verma, Somen Mishra, Amit Masurkar, Anjum Rajabali, Basharat Peer, Rima Das, Sumeet Vyas, Rajan Shahi, Vetrimaaram, Shridhar Raghavan, Swanand Kirkire, Kausar Munir and Varun Grover are some of the names who will engage in discussions as part of the various panels.Conference Convenor Sanjay Chouhan said in a statement: “This conference is gathering of not only screenwriters but also directors, producers, TV heads, academicians and creative minds. We want to bring people related to screen under one umbrella to share their experience, knowledge, mistakes, brickbats, trolls, rewards and achievement.” – IANSJimmy wants to do more comedy filmsActor Jimmy Sheirgill is keen to act in more comedy films.In films like A Wednesday, Madaari, Mukkabaaz and many more, Jimmy has been seen in intense roles.Asked what kind of roles interest him, Jimmy told the media here: “I think I have played various kinds of roles in my career but I want to do more comedy films. I like to work in light-hearted films as it makes me feel relaxed, so I would like to do more comedy films.”Jimmy will next be seen in Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3.He is happy with the response to the film’s trailer and songs.“The specialty of this series is that first part of the series was well-received by the audience and it also did commercially well at the box-office, and so we made second part of it on a bit larger scale and it also did well. So, the makers of the film thought that we should make a third part of the series, so this time again we have raised scale of the film,” he said.On his experience of working with Sanjay Dutt, Jimmy said: “We have worked with each other in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., Lage Raho Munna Bhai and Eklavya. This is our fourth film together. I always feel really good working with him.“But this time the interesting thing I wanted to see in this film was how Tigmanshu Dhulia and Sanjay Dutt combination will transpire on big screen, and I think that combination will get lot of appreciation from the audience.”Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3, releasing on July 27, is an action thriller produced by Rahul Mittra. – IANS