Dil Dhadakne Do

The only thing that can be said as negative for Dil Dhadakne Do from Zoya Akhthar is that on a basic level it copies her own movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. As ZNMD was not an existing formula when it came and there weren’t many films that felt similar to that, this formula from Zoya and Reema works again for us as an audience. With a smartly written screenplay powered by very delightful dialogues from Farhan and Javed Akhtar, Dil Dhadakne Do is an extremely pleasing entertainer with life and laughter in it.

The focus on the story is on the high class family of Kamal Mehra. His wife Neelam is a stereo type who acts friendly and secretly bitches about others (much like Kamal). His daughter Ayisha is an entrepreneur who has her own business in the travel field and her married life isn’t going smooth. And his son Kabir isn’t interested in the family business and wants to follow the profession he loves. The story happens when this not so open family decides to go on a cruise with their family friends to celebrate the 30^th wedding anniversary of Kamal and Neelam. How the issues in the understanding level get sorted out is what this almost 3 hour long movie telling us.

On many levels it is as much fun as ZNMD. And that may be because of the similarity in conflicts and also the narrative pattern. If it was 3 friends in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara, it’s the 4 member family here who wants to fix the problems. Just like Imran’s poetry in ZNMD, here we have Pluto the dog giving us the intellectual speech about the human nature (In Aamir Khan’s wonderful voice). Just like that, Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti has taken the basic structure from their previous film and presented a whole new story with romance, passion, conflicts and fun on a practical level (don’t ask me whether jumping from ship is practical). The smart writing easily makes the characters close to us. Through various scenes that have glimpses of difficulties and inequalities, Zoya establishes the problems of her main protagonists. Just like Laila, here we have Farah who pushes Kabir to take the leap of faith. The way they visualized the generation gap through various situations was hilarious and spot on. Even though the last jump to the water was a bit crazy, Zoya smartly plays there by keeping it close to reality without over doing it much.

Just like all her films, here also Zoya treats the movie in its realistic best where we as an audience will take an effort to understand the characters. There is no blatant showcasing of sentiments and even the humor happens quite naturally. People laughing at the realistic ego of characters are in a way the victory of the screenplay. Loved the way many subplots that touch almost all sorts of insecurities of the upper class were conceived in the script. The feministic agenda of the women writer duo also gets presented in a very impressive way. The dialogues written by Farhan Akhtar were humorous and sensible. The additional dialogues from Javed Akhtar also had delight and humor. Cinematography was wonderful. Edits were quite nice. Music was catchy and the usage of background score was minimal.

Anil Kapoor portrays the character of Kamal Mehra very impressively. The crookedness, the ego and the anger that was essential for Kamal was there in Mr. Kapoor’s performance. I loved the way Ranveer Singh kept his character in the less eccentric zone. He was wonderful in that scene where he argues with Shefali and Anil when Kamal gets the treatment for gas problems. Priyanka Chopra also performed nicely in her character with complications. The brother sister chemistry of Priyanka and Ranveer was also quite pleasing. Shefali Shah as Neelam was also wonderful. Anushka gave the required bold and smart feel to Farah. Farhan was good in his cameo. The vast cast has many actors including Rahul Bose, Zarina Wahab, Vikrant Massey and more and they all have done a good job. I liked that little girl who made sarcastic counter dialogues occasionally. Pluto was cute and in a way sounded like an extension of PK (catchy observations about humans).

Overall, Dil Dhadakne Do is a wonderfully written entertainer with a lot of heart. The rating for the movie is 3.5/5. It has taken a lot from ZNMD, but DDD is still a catchy one with humor all over it.