Film: Dil Bole Hadippa (Romantic Comedy)
Cast: Rani Mukherjee, Shahid Kapoor, Anupam Kher, Rakhi Sawant, Sherlyn Chopra
Director: Anurag Singh
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 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. The Pakistanis have been winning nine years in a row and are understandably cocky. The Indians, especially the team's main patron Anupam Kher is morose. Not only because his wife lives away from him in London but also because his son Rohan (Shahid Kapoor) wants to play for an English county. Feigning a heart attack, dad calls son over. Rohan takes charge of the team that Veera wants to play for. Since she cannot play as a girl, Veera masquerades as a boy. What follows isn't hard to predict for anybody who has seen even one Hindi movie a month.
Masquerades have been a time-honoured method in Hindi films where heroines lived out their more rebellious selves. In Dil Bole Hadippa too, the device enables the heroine to enter forbidden terrain. Jisse murti bana ke poojti ho, usey insaan bana ke kuchalte ho, says the heroine to the guard who refuses to let her enter the cricket ground.
DBH's heart, especially in matters of gender, is certainly in the right place. But the movie never really manages to entice the viewer into the make-believe world it creates: a world filled with green fields, red tractors, multi-coloured trucks and hyper-energetic Punjabi village folk. Director Anurag Singh neither manages to create an appealing romantic social nor a sincere sporty movie.
The movie fails to build any sort of dramatic tension that Lagaan built in the climax. Perhaps Singh should have watched a few more T20 games. You don't chase 213 after reeling at 47 for 9 in 10 overs. There's a limit to willing suspension of disbelief. Worse, the unappetising songs interrupt the narrative's flow.
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