It’s not easy, making a Dum Laga Ke Haisha. Sadhana Sargam may as well be Shreya Ghoshal. Too many digital bells and whistles are protooling it to sound better and better but the nose is gone. Sanjay Mishra and Seema Pahwa from Ankhon Dekhi show up and shine here too, as does the excellent Sheeba Chaddha as the boy’s tyrannical aunt.Ī word for the music: Anu Malik’s soundtrack is hugely enjoyable, retro in an affectionately genuine way - with Moh Moh, a tender, aching song written by Varun Grover, being the highlight - but there is one massive problem: Kumar Sanu’s truly distinctive voice doesn’t sound the same anymore. The new girl Bhumi Pednekar has a delightful smile, and is - part sassy, in part pitiful, part heroic - mostly impressively real, creating a genuine character. It’s the same problem throughout the film: Katariya assembles a fascinating ensemble of quirky characters but worries more about the 1990s feel and their lovely turn of phrase - “in a hurry to get your name on the in-law’s ration card?”, laughs a teasing aunt - as opposed to where the character is going.Īyushmann Khurrana is great, giving his mostly pathetic character a sort of sullen, defiant dignity, and biting into the role rather sportingly. Yet, the potentially groundbreaking role of the Shakha starts with light humour and is eventually completely ignored. Prem is the member of that very kind of wooly-headed organisation where grown men walk around in half-pants, and that’s what, we assume, shall define him somewhat.
Dum laga ke haisha 2015 review code#
The Shakha, the local branch of the right-wing nuts, is a fascist group, the type of thing Roderick Spode ran in Wodehouse’s The Code Of The Woosters: Spode’s boys where called The Black Shorts, and included the measurement of male knees in its manifesto. Sharat Katariya’s film, however, is beautifully seasoned, with utterly fabulous detailing: a community wedding featuring rows and rows of scarlet brides dressed like thalis at a Jagran a morse-code like frugal missed-call based moneysaver (two-rings-for-this, one-ring-for-this) pastries handed out instead of birthday cake, and - most critically - the shakha Prem attends. The fascinating Haridwar - its tongues, its street-side sass, its love for the metaphor, its intricate signboard-painting - might not itself have been the sight of many a recent rom-com, but several approximations have. There are superb actors performing a sweet script, but after a while all you have is flavour. It’s a two-hour film, and yet drags its feet enough to feel long and stretched. So simple, in fact, that Dum Laga Ke Haisha never gives you a single moment of unpredictability. She’s fat, he’s foul-tempered, and they have nothing at all in common.Īnd so it goes, a truly simple story. His bride, Sandhya, is a sharp and well-educated girl with ambitions of being a teacher.
We meet Prem a year after that in 1995, a barely-educated good-for-nothing who is being shovelled into a financially convenient marriage.
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