The municipality has been helping out residents combat the same in their day-to-day life by sharing information about preventive measures
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Now, Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do has striven to host a buffet on board an ocean liner — with a dysfunctional, swishy New Delhi family suddenly compelled to confront their pent-up secrets and &lies. And although the gifted director does display a flair for glossy visuals and &an occasional smart punch-line, the outcome left me with mega mixed feelings. Sure, it’s a commercial winner but quality-wise a loser, nowhere in the league of her debut-making Luck By Chance, a look at the wicked, wicked ways of B-town show business.
Now, what in the name of hi-jinks — love or the lack of it among a caboodle of sappy socialites — is going on? For one, there are far too many irreconcilable differences erupting belatedly over the choppy waters of DDD. Next, there’s a wise dog commenting on the goings-yawn, a device obviously snitched from Lasse Hallström’s Swedish comedy My Life As A Dog (1985). And the fact that Aamir Khan’s voiceover articulates the dog’s Confucius-like thoughts (over-written by Javed Akhtar) merely adds to the tedium. Truly, it’s more ho-hum than ha-ha.
What Zoya did just three years ago to boost the tourist attractions of Spain she doesn’t quite achieve by gliding over the selfie-friendly monuments of Turkey and Tunisia. Indeed, you feel that the story could have been anchored in New Delhi itself, but then, then there would have been no USP to the screenplay which hops, skips and jumps all over the ocean liner, whose European staff look as if they are on tranquilisers.
Be that as it may, the family in focus is facing a cataclysmic business crisis. Yet, on the pretext of celebrating a three-decade-old wedding anniversary, the Mehras sail off with friends (all cartoon-like caricatures) on a cruise which is sun-lit but edged by 50 shades, if not more, of darkness. These include extra-marital affairs, sermons on women’s lib, a medical emergency, a journalist who wants to change the world and, last but not the least, an eligible bachelor who’s more interested in flying airplanes than saving his father’s business from bankruptcy. He must possess an airplane, it seems, to live yuppily ever after.
Come to think of it, the kitchsy ‘family dramas’ of the 1960s made in the Hindi language in Chennai at least had the &fundamentals spot-on. Be it Khandan or Mehrban, the pressures of the joint family system were, at the very least, palpable. These were refined to a degree by Sooraj Barjatya’s grand-daddy of the genre, Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! And &then came the turn of the NRI families, epitomised memo-rably by Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Benevolent uncles, aunts and dadi maas and nanis were &assigned roles oozing over with the milk of human kindness. And, of course, Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham encapsulated it all with the oft-quoted catchline, “It’s all about loving the family.”
Both Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar elected to be larger-than-life, glamour-coated and escapist. Despite that, their films set off an emotional blast.
Undoubtedly, Dil Dhadakne Do has a few stray moments of wit and unbridled energy, courtesy expert performances by Anil Kapoor, Shefali Shah and (wonder of wonders) Ranveer Singh. Alas, that just isn’t sufficient these days when stories need to be insightful and intelligent, without such scattershot lines of dialogue: “This is getting ridiculous.” Indeed, it is.
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