Haan, haan, payo payo; haha…
Prem Ratan Dhan Payo
Director: Sooraj Barjatya
Actors: Salman Khan, Sonam Kapoor
Rating: *
There’s a lot of blockbuster entertainment produced globally every other weekend where even the filmmakers are clear that the “critic” does not matter.
The so-called critic in turn believes that the film itself doesn’t matter. Discourse around this picture is not likely to be any different. There are certain portions here though that made be believe that perhaps even the audiences don’t matter.
Just to let you in on the sort of assault of lunacy we’re talking about here, it’s only fair that we briefly touch upon roughly the beginning. Firstly, this is not a period film.
The hero who plays Salman Khan (which is usually the case with all Salman films) is a prince of a weird-ass kingdom. There is also a princess (Sonam Kapoor, looking shorter than Salman), who he’s supposed to marry eventually. His coronation is only a few days away. He uses the iPhone 6, but rides in a horse carriage in the steep hills that goes astray. He is presumably badly injured.
This means what, exactly? Well it means that another man, a full-on simpleton, who for no reason known to us looks exactly like the prince, is brought in to ensure that the coronation ceremony takes place without a hitch.
For his core fans, what could be better than a Salman Khan movie? I guess a film that has Salman Khan in a diametrically opposite double role. Much like Amitabh Bachchan (and later Shah Rukh Khan) in Don.
The new rustic Salman transforms himself without any effort into a prince and thereafter sets out to fix family disputes and fuddy-duddy ways of a feudal setup. You think perhaps Ram Aur Shyam, Seeta Aur Geeta or Khubsoorat kinda story?
There’s also a girl involved, with two eligible suitors—the prince, and the pauper. The princess even wears a little black dress hoping that the pauper (who’s playing the prince) will finally sleep with him. He doesn’t. Only one of the heroes can have the girl.
And you wonder, since this stars Salman, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam? A gentleman in my audience also pointed out Raja Aur Runk, starring Sanjeev Kumar, based on Mark Twain’s The Prince And The Pauper, from the late ‘60s.
The reason I have drawn so many parallels is to make it clear that any allusion to any other movie would be disservice to writer-director Sooraj Barjatya’s wholly nutso and original world and imagination. Which, like his Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, you will only be able to sit through if you don’t think of it as a film in the first place.
It’s like if you view this movie’s hero as not an actor but a character himself, Salman’s stardom begins to make more sense. As does say Barkha Dutt’s appeal if you watch her as an Oprah Winfrey rather than merely a news anchor/reporter.
Barjatya’s HAHK was probably the world’s first three-hour-plus film with a story that had no conflict (and therefore a plot) up until the last half hour. There was antakshari, cricket match, and plenty of songs to keep you glued to a mass theatrical experience of another kind.
Over here too, I was interested more in the audience in the popular single-screen Chandan cinema in Juhu (Mumbai) than the film itself. They were initially desperate to cheer at anything with Salman on screen. Slowly the girl to my left started doing her hair. The one to my right kept whining over every scene. The front stall considerably lowered its volume. Some of them fished out their cellphones. Most of them woke up to randomly scream out loud once in a while
This is Sooraj Barjatya’s first film with Salman in 16 years. It looks at least 32 years old. The performances seem dated. The sets appear massive and tacky. Everyone talks in a slow staccato tone halting at words in long sentences. The soundtrack is uniformly second rate, and yet that song on ‘ghujiya’ and other eatables takes the cake.
What are you left with? That ear worm of a title track that’s drilled a hole in our ears for almost a month now, “Prem ratan dhan payo, payo, payo, payo…” Uggh, still playing in my head, so you can imagine….