Veere Di Wedding

Veere Di Wedding in a way reminded me how subtle Queen starring Kangna Ranaut was as a film that spoke about the female perspective. The things they speak about in Veere Di Wedding like how unapologetic women should be about their relationship are good on a “message” level. But Shashanka Ghosh’s attempt to give it a shape isn’t working the way one would expect. And because of the familiarity and guessable trajectory of the overall script, it’s funny occasionally but doesn’t give you the kind of warmth you expect.

Four women who are best friends from school, Kalindi, Avni, Sakshi, and Meera are our central characters. Kalindi has just decided to marry Rishabh, her boyfriend. Avni is a divorce lawyer and is single. Sakshi is going through a troubled marriage and Meera is married to a foreigner without the consent of her family and has a child in that relationship. So all of them join for the wedding of Kalindi and most of them, especially Kalindi and Avni are confused about taking up the commitment of a marriage. How they go through that and how eventually they convince themselves is what Veere Di Wedding all about.

I won’t say I hated watching Veere Di Wedding as it feels crisp at a runtime of two hours. But it’s the lack of layers in the storytelling what stops it from being a memorable comedy. You do laugh and relate to the witty stuff you see on screen like the whole façade of an arranged marriage and how the society judges an individual when he or she doesn’t get married. My point is, you have to use those points and make a story that doesn’t tell all these stuff on your face. One reason why I love Zoya Akhtar films even when people criticize them saying “rich people problems” is that she makes the conflicts in her movie relatable on an emotional level. Here when the girls are going to Phuket for a relief from all the chaos, I was actually getting the feel of the “rich people problems”.

Shashanka Ghosh who previously made the remake of Khoobsurat with Sonam stays pretty much in the same tone when it comes to the visual grammar of the film. Frames are always bright and rich. The film is written by Nidhi Mehra and Mehul Suri and I must say there is very little originality in the writing. After you get a good look at each character’s life story till that point, you will kind of predict what will happen to them at the end (Thanks to movies like ZNMD and Queen) and the writers won’t prove you wrong. It’s good to see a female-centric film unapologetically approaching a lot of areas that usually Bollywood movies cover with clichés. But the desperation to be quirky at times puts the movie in a bizarre zone. The kind of comedy they tried to create using the stepmother character of Kalindi was cringe-worthy (It was like somebody inserted a clip from Grand Masti into Khoobsurat). In most of the sentimental sequences, the film is a little too vocal leaving no space for the viewer. The editing is really tacky with numerous continuity glitches.

Much like the interviews during the promotion, the gorgeous Kareen Kapoor Khan applies the less is more theory smartly and delivers a really convincing performance.  Sonam Kapoor sort of repeats her role in Aisha. The talented Swara Bhaskar went unused here. Shikha Talsania as the most experienced girl in the group makes a pretty good impression. Sumeet Vyas makes Rishabh a sensible character even though the first scene sort of makes us feel that he is a stupid guy.

Veere Di Wedding is like that passable popcorn flick where the relatable factor might be there in the dialogues, but the drama isn’t going deep. It is somewhat an amalgamation of movies like Queen and ZNMD, but the feeling you get at the end isn’t anywhere near that.

Rating: 2.5/5