Prem Ratan Dhan Payo - Review - Hindi and Punjabi Songs Lyrics

http://bit.ly/1QxdGgH

wogma rating: Switch channels if it's on cable ^(?)

quick review:

Would it have worked if it were shorter? Naah, it would have been as tedious and boring.

[Poster for Prem Ratan Dhan Payo]

Review

A coronation set in present day India – it is fantasy world, alright. Within that framework too though, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo doesn't have an interesting tale to tell. Neither do you quite 'get' the characters' motivations nor their greivances. Also, all the extravagance you see in the trailer is all there is. The rest of the film is a visual drab too.

A few situations make you feel like you are in a time-warp. Mythili, a successful entrepreneur who also runs a charitable organisation (as superficial as it might look) is suddenly demure about wearing a short dress. She seems pretty comfortable with what she wears so far in the film and carries it well too. It seems more like a Barjatya obsession. Have the lead lady become all aware and weird about a “western” dress that her man wants her to wear.

The writing is too conscious of itself too – trying too hard to be a Barjatya-Salman film that has to teach you a thing or two about family values. As blasphemous as it sounds, a stranger showing up in a family to solve their internal squabbles, reminded me of Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Bawarchee. But, why set it up in a “princedom”? You lose connect immediately. If you want me to escape from my real-life problems, why would you bring up familial issues? To top it off, add TV serial style lighting, décor, costumes-jewelry and melodrama.

In the midst of this, there's one honest moment when Mythili has had enough and can't handle the strain of her relationship with the prince any more. But, other than that, there too much effort put into making us believe what the character is feeling. To blame it on the actors would be take the easy route out.

Sure, Salman Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Anupam Kher, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Swara Bhaskar are all guilty of trying too hard to be what they are supposed to be rather than make their characters believable. But, they have no help from the script. The dialogue induce eyerolls. And the innuendos seemed pretty out of place.

The lesser said about the screenplay, the better. Just because it is Diwali season, you have a song with mathri and chakli and a scene with *Bhaubeej? All too cheesy. All this serves the sole purpose of elongating the run-time of the film. More time in the theaters is a festival gift?

I saw Prem Ratan Dhan Payo in a single screen theater, in a small town in Maharashtra - a theater where a house full of whistles drowned down dialogue for a good part of the first half hour. That is how excited the audience was to be there. While I wasn't too happy with the movie-watching experience, I was excited about watching the film with the target audience. In a way, it was sad to sense a lull in the crowd for most of the second half. No one should have to watch a film they didn't like on a festival day. A few people left the theater before the end too. But hey, if films which prefer so-called extravagance (with shoddy CGI) to some effort in writing are beginning to bore people, I see a silver lining.