How I lost $11 one Sunday afternoon

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (LONG ASS) Review

WARNING : SPOILERS INCLUDED

Another Shahrukh film. Hamming, loads of dumb songs and a happy ending (not the massage therapist kind) is what people have come to expect from Yashraj+Shahrukh films. It took years for a DDLJ or a Chak De to come along so who knows when the next good one will arrive. Although I can assure you Rab De… isn’t the one.

The movie begins on a somewhat sensible note. Taani (the new girl) is to be married. Surinder (Shahrukh) was her father's best student and Taani remembers her father being very fond of him. In case you are wondering, Taani is having a 'Love Marriage' and the groom isn’t Surinder. Surinder actually meets Taani for the first time on the morning of her wedding, where he falls in love with her. But secs later tragedy strikes. The bus carrying the baraat has an accident and no one survives. Taani gets sad and her father has a massive heart attack. Cut to the hospital scene where Taani's father asks Surinder to marry Taani which she agrees to do and then the father dies.

After their marriage Taani moves into Surinder's house and that is the first time where we are properly introduced to Surinder. A shy, soft spoken guy who wears specs, has a moustache, drives a scooter, lives alone blah blah blah. Taani is still sad from the multiple deaths in the first 15 minutes of the film and remains quiet and keeps to herself. Surinder gives her his own room and moves into the attic where he stays till the end of the movie. Don’t fall asleep yet coz it’s about to get interesting. Taani promises Surinder that she will be a better wife but can't love him and to quote her exact words "..kyunki merey dil mein utna pyaar hain hi nahin....". Now Surinder loves her and wants her to love him so tries to find a way to do that.

See the movie makes a lil bit of sense till here. 1) Bus accidents happen so her future husband's death is believable. 2) Her father asks her to marry a man he knows well and she can't deny that to him on his deathbed, again believable. 3) Dad/Ex-BF/Future Husband/Future in-laws death saddens her so much that she doesn’t feel like falling in love, again believable. 4) Husband loves her and expects his wife to love him, again believable. BUT WHOEVER THE F*** CAME UP WITH THE NEXT PART OF THE SCRIPT IS HANDSDOWN RESPONSIBLE FOR CONTRIBUTING TO THE CRAP THAT PASSES AS FILMS IN BOLLYWOOD MOST OF THE TIME.

Taani wants to join a dance class and Surinder is happy with it. As he sits in a men’s salon owned by his friend Bobby (Vinay Pathak) he asks his friend to give him a new look to help his wife fall in love with him. Combs and Scissors fill the screen and Surinder looks different. He goes to the dance class and is mistaken for a participant. Luck or the writer’s stupidity makes Surinder Taani’s dance partner. And here’s the part I love the most.

When Taani sees him she doesn’t recognise him at all. And he makes up a fake name, Raj, and seems to think he has a shot with her if he wears an ensemble mostly seen sold by laaris and footpaths. So this is the moment where the movie seriously makes an attempt to withhold logic and actually succeeds. Raj has spiked hair, colourful clothes and no moustache and his wife fails to recognise him. He doesn’t change his voice neither manages to change his physique but she still can’t recognise him. I MEAN WTF???? Also at that point in the movie we realise that Taani has the same disease that Lois Lane has which makes her incapable of recognising a dude if he takes his glasses off. I MEAN FOR F*** SAKE, the scriptwriter actually wants us to believe that crap and seeing how its in the film the director doesn’t seem to have any issues with it either. What follows next is even dumber. Surinder decides to woo her as Raj, so that she can love Raj, at which point he hopes to reveal that he is Surinder. The logic seems f***ed up ha?!?! Welcome to the club.

So our darling Surinder informs his wife that he will be working overtime which would explain his absence while he is blinding Amritsar with his clothes as Raj. He also has a fake moustache made by his friend Bobby and changes from Surinder to Raj at his friend’s salon. Stay with me, we are still in the 1st hour of the film and we have 2 more to go. As Raj tries to act cool, we are bombarded with terrible dialogues, bad acting and the most annoying dance instructor in the history of Indian cinema who has 3 lines to speak but still manages to f*** up her Hindi grammar. FOR F*** SAKE YOU ARE IN A ‘HINDI’ MOVIE AND HAVE JUST THREE LINES IN HINDI, HOW F***ED UP DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO MAKE GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN THOSE 3 LINES??? Anyway moving on, so Raj acts cool and Taani starts liking him and they become ‘friends’. Also note the absence of a mangalsutra and sindoor which she does wear for like 10 minutes but as soon as she joins the dance class it disappears and she also happens to forget to tell Raj (wink wink) that she is married. After a bunch of dumb attempts (bike scene, garage scene, golguppa scene) to make us laugh Surinder tells Taani that he loves her but doesn’t expect her to love him back (awww, F***ING JACKASS). So Taani feels sorry, goes for a movie with hubby, hubby feels he’s won her heart but she disappears halfway thru the movie and goes to find Raj. She tells Raj crap like how selfless he is for loving her and not expecting love from her blah blah blah and tells him she loves him too. Raj asks her to run away with him and she agrees, kinda.

Around the time when all this shit f**kery is happening you get one single line of honesty from Bobby who says that Raj expresses his love for her and Surinder doesn’t. Taani has been thru crap and would obviously go with the person who expresses his love instead of the dude whom she isn’t sure about. But you are again bestowed with some more shit f**kery where Surinder says if she has to love Surinder then she ll love him as the guy who doesn’t profess his love. I MEAN WTF???? Is he a schizo who has forgotten that he’s playing both the guys doing his wife (albeit in their own head and some songs). Anyway another dumb Japanese Fair scene (also racist and stereotyped) follows.

THE MOVIE’S ALMOST OVER (YAY). Finally we come to the day where she is expected to run away with Raj. They go to the Golden temple where she closes her eyes to pray and asks god to show her the person “…jismey rab basta hain…”. She opens her eyes. Everything is blurred. She can’t see anything. Things start clearing and she sees a hazy figure. Who could that be??? OMG!!! It’s her husband Surinder !!!! Light bulb in her head and she realises she loves her husband and not Raj. (I m just gonna say SHIT F**KERY here, feel free to add WTF and for F***’s sake).

So she meets Raj and tells him she can’t run away. There’s a final dance competition. Surinder shows up in his Clarke Kent garb and dances. She sees Surinder’s dance moves which are eerily similar to the ones she practised with Raj and puts two and two together (I could have saved 2 hours of my life if the dumbass had some form of intelligence). Anyway, dance gets over and the curtains close. She is teary and asks Surinder why he loved her even though she had no love for him (you‘d expect a “WTF did you do to my feelings you spectacled lying bastard” from her but she’s a dumbass so they kinda deserve each other). They win the dance competition and live happily ever after. THE END.

Logic has always failed to come close to Yash Raj’s movies and RAB NE… isn’t any different. The whole shit f**kery could have been avoided by making Raj a different person rather than Surinder’s alter ego and a love triangle would have been slightly more interesting than what actually ended up being shown in theatres. It’s pitiful that as of 2008 we are being bombarded with such senseless movies when clearly we have money and talent to do something better. Don’t believe me then watch Khosla Ka Ghosla or Jab We Met or Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. Not perfect but at least doesn’t screw logic in the ass for the whole duration of the movie. And look out for the 70s style song in Rab Ne… which has spectacular sets that reaffirms the style the song was going for and tell me why the same amount of creativity couldn’t be used during scripting.