Since it's a Dharma Production, the wedding takes place in England for no ostensible reason, Bhatt is wearing clothes that show off her lissom figure, there's a gay 'chachu' who obviously has a limp wrist and is a stylist, and Karan Johar has a cameo. There's a picturesque location, an elaborate wedding, lots of senseless song sequences, a romance that's absurdly chaste and some ghastly animation (remember Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon?). On screen, Shaandaar is Bahl's attempt at making a mashup of Frozen and almost every Rajshri Production film, but in Dharma Productions' packaging.Īll the stock characters are there, including the grandmother. The other is good at heart, tubby and being used by her mother and grandmother to secure a deal with a business partner because the Aroras are almost bankrupt. One is the adopted child, the pretty one who struggles to find acceptance and is an insomniac. On paper, Shaandaar is the story of two sisters. While Alia and Jagjinder woo each other by peeling Fevicol off their palms, Eesha realises that the man with whom her wedding has been arranged has absolutely nothing going for him other than his eight-and-a-half pack of abs. Ergo, Alia and Jagjinder are obviously made for each other. He drives a bike, can bust out mean dance moves and is also an insomniac. When Bipin's daughter is to have a grand wedding in an English estate, Bipin and Alia meet wedding planner, Jagjinder Joginder (Shahid Kapoor). This is the running (not-so-funny) joke in Shaandaar. Alia (Alia Bhatt) is by now a raging insomniac who flits around chewing gum, taking midnight swims, eating bananas, reading books and Googling like a maniac - because what else is a girl to do in the dead of the night? Bipin's (Pankaj Kapoor) one dream is to find a man who will put Alia to sleep. Years pass and the animated characters from the opening episode transform into flesh and blood cartoons. Clearly, no one in Bahl and Parmar's imaginary world has seen Masoom.
Apparently, no one ever understood why Bipin brought Alia home and raised her with such love and tenderness. We learn that a little girl named Alia has been adopted by a gent called Bipin Arora, who has a goatee, an old beer bottle cap, a dominating dowager mummy and a catty wife. The film begins with a shoddily-animated sequence and a listless voiceover by narrator Naseeruddin Shah. Shaandaar gives you fair warning that this film is anything but fabulous, right from its first scene. Trust no one indeed.Īlia Bhatt, Shahid Kapoor in Shaandaar. It's sloppily written, lazily directed and completely without insight. Yet, Shaandaar is exactly the opposite of its title. The story has been written by Bahl and Chaitally Parmar (part of Queen's writing team too), with dialogues by Anvita Dutt, who co-wrote the dialogues for Queen. After all, Shaandaar is something of a reunion for the Queen team. No one who has seen Queen could have anticipated such a drastic drop in storytelling and directorial skills. It turns out that the message that prefaced episodes of The X-Files were bang on the money: Trust no one.Ĭynics (like yours truly) might have figured from the trailers of Shaandaar that it wouldn't be quite as quirky as Queen, but director Vikas Bahl's new film is a surprise. Shaandaar proves that these assumptions are wildly off-base.
When they've been entrusted with a big budget and lavish settings, you'd expect a film that's fabulous. Under normal circumstances, you'd think that when three of the four people credited with having written Queen join hands again, the film they'll make will be fun and clever.
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