I blame Farah Khan. After the huge success of Main Hoon Na filmmakers realized that they could just slap a coat of fresh paint on old Bollywood hits, add a tribute scene or two, repackage the tried and tested formula with some contemporary flavor and thrust it on unsuspecting audiences too young to remember the original.

Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya makes no bones about the fact that it is a DDLJ remake. The opening credits show the tapori hero Humpty Sharma unashamedly crying to the final train scene from the original movie. To this hackneyed plot are added updates that are supposed to represent modernity, namely,
– Hero with a funny name (Barfi, Bunny, Humpty)
– Heroine who smokes, drinks, and swears (Tanu Weds Manu, Shuddh Desi Romance)
– Guilt-free premarital sex
– Sympathetic family
– 2 sidekicks for the hero (young unknowns who have replaced the comic relief characters Johnny Lever etc. used to play)
– Loose, street banter
– Side plot where everybody demonstrates how cool they are with someone being gay by making jokes about homosexuality.

DDLJ was a complete romantic fantasy, but it was Aditya Chopra’s own fantasy, so the movie still had some authenticity despite the caricatured characters and unrealistic plot. HSKD is based on someone else’s fantasy, so the characters, their motivations, their environment are twice removed from reality. It is as if the writers of HSKD lived in a film set their whole lives where they experienced nothing except other Bollywood movies.

Each character is a pastiche of many other Bollywood screen entities and this leads to characters behaving in schizophrenic ways. Ashutosh Rana as the heroine’s father swings wildly between an Anupam Kher-like sympathetic figure and an Amrish Puri tyrant. Alia Bhat channels a firebrand Kajol from DDLJ, a demure Rani from KKHH, and a no-holds-barred Kangana from Tanu Weds Manu, sometimes in the same scene. Varun Dhawan as the titular Humpty tries very hard to create a personality for himself, but his slack-jawed dialogue delivery does no justice to his character, who is a blend of Aamir from Rangeela, Shahrukh from DDLJ and Saif from, well, any Saif movie.

Even the scenes are cut/pasted from other movies. This leads to very jarring juxtapositions. The heroine comes from a fairly conservative family but they seem to be okay with her spending the night with strangers. She and the hero impulsively have sex one night, most likely the first time for her, but the next day she seems cool with it, something her upbringing, as shown in the movie, does not support. The heroine’s father, despite having serious objections to Humpty, agrees to let him stay in his house for five days when the lovebirds koochy-coo every night and exhibit PDAs every day.

It doesn’t help that the music sucks. Music has saved many a bad movie from disaster (I Hate Luv Storys comes to mind) but in this case the soundtrack is a generic 3-wedding-songs, 1-tragic-song package that does nothing except provide bathroom breaks.

The leads are nice looking, especially Alia Bhatt who is bursting with health and vitality but, in the hands of inexperienced director Shashank Khaitan, both she and Varun Dhawan (David Dhawan’s son) just wing it through the movie. Dhawan, in particular, has his mouth open all the time and looks like he is just about to drool. It is an ultra-relaxed style of emoting that is popular these days, but what inexperienced actors don’t realize that it takes a lot of effort to look natural. For pointers I would direct them to Kangana in Queen, who achieved that effortless style after working hard at it in several movies earlier.

Unfortunately these kind of movies have been successful and, judging by the reaction in yesterday’s screening, the audience liked the movie just fine. In a summer drought of light-hearted time-pass fare, Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya is a drop of recycled water, not tasty, but relieving thirst all the same.

We have a saying in our family that “Disney Ruins Everything.” We watched in dismay as the quality of Pixar movies dropped after Disney took over, and now the Disneyfication of Marvel has the die-hard comic fans in my family aghast.

Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani(YJHD) is an perfect example of the Joharification of mainstream Bollywood. To be fair, Karan Johar himself was inspired by Yash Chopra, whose glossy movies about wealthy Punjabi romances set a certain template for song and dance movies, but Chopra was a romantic at heart, and there was a sincerity in his vision that shone through the mehndis, sangeets, and tulip fields. With Johar, the emotional manipulation in his movies is blatant, from the kid singing Jana Gana Mana in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, to the dupatta handed over by Kajol to Rani in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. There is also something ersatz about all his movies, as if he is incapable of genuine feeling and reconstructs it from the vision and product of other, better directors.

Jawaani is directed by Ayan Mukherjee and stars Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone, but it might as well have been helmed by Johar and starred Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol. Johar, who produced the movie, seems to have had such a strong influence on the young director that Mukherjee, who previously made the warm-hearted Wake Up Sid with such finesse, goes full-on Bollywood, with ensemble song-and-dances at the drop of a hat and big wedding productions.

Still, Jawaani, the tale of a boy with itchy feet and a girl back home who pines for him, is watchable, and credit for that must go almost entirely to Kapoor and Padukone, who share an incredibly chemistry and light up the screen whenever they are together. The first half, where the shy Naina blossoms under the throwaway affection of the oddly named Bunny and where the lead pair is together on screen most of the time, is quite magical. The aptly named Naina conveys such tender wistfulness to be a part of Bunny’s cool gang and to be loved by the nomadic Bunny that you feel intensely what it’s like to be her. Padukone is perfectly cast and those supercharged moments that promise a budding relationship are beautifully directed and acted.

In the second half the movie loses steam, mainly because the absence of the romantic pair makes you realize how thin this 2 hour, 40 minute film really is. Kalki Koechlin and Aditya Roy Kapur have an unnecessary amount of screen time, but even all that time is not enough to fully develop their characters or their story lines. The denouement is disappointing, but then I think most romantic movies don’t get it right, so maybe it’s just my opinion.

Mukherjohar’s musical co-conspirator is Pritam, which is why each song reminds you of another composer. There is an Amit Trivedi-style song sung by Rekha Bhardwaj called “Kabira,” a Salim-Suleimanesque number titled “Dilliwali Girlfriend,” and the peppy “Badtameez Dil” feels like it could have been composed by Vishal-Shekhar.

To Pritam’s credit, the songs are all peppy and hummable and well-choreographed, but after the evolution of Bollywood movies to songs being played in the background, the ensemble numbers feel retro. And roping in an ageing Madhuri Dixit for an item number is a classic example of the audience manipulation that Johar is famous for.

If you are a Karan Johar fan, by all means watch YJHD. It will not make you feel any real emotion, or linger in your mind after you return home, but for the nearly three hours you are in the theater you will be entertained. I would have been more depressed by the corruption of a good director like Mukherjee, but the trailers of Lootera and Ranjhaana that I saw left me with hope. And Kapoor and Padukone are so good together that I predict they will be a classic romantic pair in many movies to come.

My rating: 3/5

The bad news about GoW is that it doesn’t tread on any new stuff. The good news is that where it does tread, it does so with a sure and deft touch, showcasing director Anurag Kashyap’s now-undeniable talent.

Movies about gangland empires and their bloody turf wars and successions are pretty common ( and, in my opinion, easy to make). Pick almost any of Ram Gopal Varma’s oeuvre and you’ll see what I mean. The difference here is that instead of setting the confrontations in Mumbai’s dank and fecund underground, Kashyap takes on the coal belt towns of Dhanbad and Wasseypur and the gory butchering industry to craft a multi-genrational saga that has more than a passing resemblance to the Godfather series in its delineation of characters and their relationships.

Family rivalries begin in 1940s India between the Qureshis and the Khans and continue unabated as the momentous events of Indian independence simply translate to a changing of the reins of power without any impact of the lives or fortunes of the poor. British oppression gives way to exploitation by the corrupt politicos of the district, as the protagonists quickly figure out new alliances.

GoW is told from the point of view of the Khans, with a bulk of this first movie focusing on Sardar Khan, the second generation of the Khan family as he hard-scrabbles his way to establish himself as the local goonda. As his life story is revealed, we see the complex dynamics in the power play between the two families, and can see the beginnings of the rivalries that will permeate the next generation.

If the plot sounds familiar, it is, and this tends to make the movie a tad predictable. But it is scripted, directed, and acted amazingly well. If mainstream movies aimed for even 50% of the talent that is on display here, the Indian film industry would be ready to take its place in the ranks of global cinema.

Manoj Bajpai as Sardar Khan is as good as ever, and deals with the complex character with nuance. The script and his fine acting are able to give this cold-hearted killer a sympathetic touch, which is quite a feat considering we see him hacking down rivals in the most gory ways possible.

The supporting cast is equally good, and using lesser-known actors really pays off, as they completely inhabit their characters. The women, as often happens in these gangster movies, are the wives, mistresses and victims, but the terrific writing is able to flesh out each character in the limited time she is given. Kudos to Kashyap for making the fearsome Sardar a hen-peckedcoard at home; this makes for the few laugh-out loud moments in this grim and gruesome movie. Richa Chaddha as Nagma, Sardar’s wife, is pitch perfect, and Reema Sen as his mistress is great too.

As I said before, I happen to think that gangland movies are relatively easy to make because there is so much drama to be exploited. RGV’s success with Satya, Sarkar, and Company, and his appalling failure with other genres (except for Rangeela) sort of illustrates my point. But Kashyap has already proven his mettle with such diverse movies as Dev D, a contemporary remake of Devdas, and That Girl With Yellow Boots, where wife Kalki Koechlin play the eponymous role of an expat masseuse looking for her father. Gangs of Wasseypur feels like an experiment in this particular genre,though a wildly successful one. Here’s hoping that after this saga is completed with GoW2 we’ll see another quirky movie in a different genre from this terrific movie maker.

Oh, the music? I didn’t particularly care for it, but it seemed to appeal to the guys I know a lot. Maybe a gender thing.:)

Kid Advisory: NOT FOR KIDS OF ANY AGE.