Dil Bole Hadippa! Movie Reviews

Dil Bole Hadippa begins with Veera (Rani Mukherjee), the spunky Punjabi kudi in bright pink kurta and blue dupatta doing what Yuvraj Singh did to Stuart Broad in the Twenty20 World Cup two years ago: smashing six sixes off six balls. When you write - A for all-rounder, B for batsman, C for catch and D for dreams - you are cricket-crazy all right. Veera badly wants to play in the Aman Cup, an annual cricket game between two teams from either side of the border.

DBH is the Punjabi version of the 2006 high school rom-com ‘She’s The Man’ in which a girl disguises herself as her brother to get in a soccer team. Catch up DBH to see the fiery chemistry between first-time paired Bollywood ki rani Rani Mukherjee and Kamine star Shahid Kapoor.

If you have diabetes or cholesterol, avoid Dil Bole Hadippa!. For others, the movie has an abundance of ghee and ganne ka ras — no, we aren’t talking about Rakhi Sawant and Sherlyn Chopra — to make a sumptuous (loud and melodramatic, if you are in the other team) start to your festive season.

Dil Bole Hadippa is a celebration of the never-say-die spirit of Yash Raj Films. For years they have epitomized bhartiya sanskriti amidst Punjab's sarso-de-khet which they continue to do even today without much advancement. This time they seek faint inspiration from the Hollywood flick She's The Man (2006), replace the soccer with cricket, liberally regurgitate plotlines from their recent library of films and deck it up with patriotic sentiments.

There's indulgence and there's overkill. But when it stretches beyond that, it's simply an excessive fest of clichés. In that sense alone, Dil Bole Hadippa, though not necessarily a bad film, suffers from too many déjà vu-evoking distractions to wholly work.To begin with, there's Yash Raj Films's stock supply of Punjab. The open-terrace block house looks awfully familiar. Do Veer and Zaara still live here?

Cricket, like Bollywood, is an addiction for a wide majority of Indians. DIL BOLE HADIPPA tries to capture the spirit of the game and the aspirations of a sportsperson, who's keen to play for her pind. On paper, the concept, which bears an uncanny resemblance to SHE'S THE MAN, sounds interesting, but the problem is its writing, which is tame and mediocre.

what makes DBH worth a watch is Rani Mukherji. The pretty actress has lost loads of weight and appears briefly in a bikini top in the title track as the credits roll. To her credit, she makes the two characters feel distinctly different and puts across a very lovable performance. Shahid Kapoor has limited scope, but his performance grows on you towards the end of the second half. Anupam Kher and Dalip Tahil were good in their respective roles.

Fifteen minutes into Dil Bole Hadippa!, you get the feeling you have seen the film before. In fact, it was the memorable Chak De! India, also from Yash Raj Films. So why this dull, fairy tale version now? Further, after Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, YRF has realised that Indian audiences can’t really tell when an actor is playing an obvious double role, so let’s fool them again. However, DBH is a plodding film, despite the talented Rani Mukerji trying her best to spark it up. She does succeed in patches

Dil Bole Hadippa, produced by Bollywood's ‘I-Proud-To-Be-A-Punjabi’ film studio, Yash Raj Films, is an unimaginative and thoroughly boring comedy starring Rani Mukherjee as Veera, a pretty Punjabi kudi in Amritsar who is so nuts about cricket... it's a crushing bore of a film that's neither thrilling in its cricket scenes, nor entertaining in its humour. What's it going to take to expect some originality and inventiveness from one of the biggest players in Bollywood?

Director Anurag Singh hardly gives an indication of his ability to direct in a film that's anything but original. Shahid, riding on the Kaminey wave, is endearing. From the serious-faced mentor of the team to flirtatiously wooing Veera, he does well. DBH rests largely on the performance of its lead character, Rani Mukherjee in this case. Although she gets Veer just right, and is alright in her 'Babli' encore as Veera, she can't quite make Dil Bole Hadippa worthy of a Rs250 trip to the theatre

Completely without context, the filmmakers slip in for us spiels after spiels on Indo-Pak bonhomie, idea of ‘Indianness’ over ‘western culture’, rhetoric on women’s empowerment, cricket’s frenzy, and a dumpling on small town aspirations. You sit and wonder.As an idea, this remains still a full-on film festival designed around the female lead. She is decent. She usually is. But, what is this film?