Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

Rating: 6/10 (5 September 2009)

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi is a typical example of a romantic comedy. A sympathetic, light movie, far from being ambitious. We have seen stories like this many, many times before, notably in teenager movies. Here's the basic formula of the latter: Nerd falls in love with Beauty Queen, but she doesn't care for nerds, and so, Nerd takes off his glasses, puts on jeans, and suddenly becomes a super-cool dude. Of course, Beauty Queen does not recognize him in his new outfit, and quickly develops a liking toward Mr. Cool. But now our hero has a problem: he is leading a double life, and the girl still does not love him, but merely his creation. His alter ego also becomes his rival. After a while, the girl comes to understand that there's more in life than just coolness, and that our Nerd at least has a good heart. And so, exit Mr. Cool. Nerd and Beauty Queen live happily ever after.
Formulaic, predictable and far from innovative, but let's be fair: that's what romantic comedies like this tend to be like. That does necessarily make it bad, because at last, everything depends on the script, the characters, the acting, the jokes, etc. And here, RNBDJ should be given credit: the story differs from the above-mentioned teenager movies in so far, that the characters are a bit older, and our nerd is not a nerd, but a boring, gray office clerk. Besides, he already is the husband of the girl he loves. His problem is that she doesn't love him, and in his efforts to gain her heart, the husband becomes his wife's lover simultaneously. Funny ingredients, indeed. Yet, RNBDJ has quite a few major flaws.
The first 30-40 minutes are well-made and fairly promising. Unfortunately, after that the whole thing becomes painfully predictable. The level drops and everything goes on as expected, without any particular surprises. But okay, we are dealing with a romantic comedy here, so let's not be tough. There are too many things I cannot buy, though. For example, Surinder's metamorphosis is only a matter of taking of his glasses, shaving off his mustache, a slightly different haircut and different clothes. How is it possible that his own wife wouldn't recognize him, while everybody else recognizes him immediately? Is she blind, or what? I also find the way Surinder handles his wife hard to swallow: he loves her more than anything, but yet, he keeps pretending to be the most boring husband on Earth. But then, she isn't entirely consistent in her behavior herself either. The moment when she finally understands that her husband loves her, comes way to easily, making it look like nothing but a cheap excuse for a happy end. Another weak point is Suri's fight with a Japanese sumo wrestler, especially this easy victory over an opponent who is five times heavier and ten times stronger. It would have been more effective if the wrestler hadn't left him in one piece. Looking how her husband was wounded and covered with blood, Taani might have understood something about his feelings toward her. At last, this whole dance competition was nothing but a joke, without any serious rivals and without any impressive performance. Here, the creators of the movie missed a splendid opportunity to add music and dance sequences in a fairly natural way.
A strong minus of this movie is the limited number of characters. Basically, there are only three: Surinder/Raj (Shahrukh Khan), Taani (the débutante Anushka), and Bobby (Vinay Pathak). All the rest are extras at best. Of these three, I like Vinay Pathak best. Although his role is a minor one, he plays it with so much flair and humor that he steals the entire movie. A really gifted actor, this Vinay, and a true asset for Bollywood. I find it hard to tell much about Anushka's role. Although she plays the female lead role, her character is surprisingly colorless and underdeveloped: a pretty face, nothing else. All in all, I think Anushka isn't doing bad, but nothing memorable either. And Shahrukh Khan? In my opinion, his creation of Surinder is cartoonesque, artificial and little credible. Same goes for his Raj character, although that one was at least supposed to be like that. All in all, Surinder is a matter of clothes, glasses and the like, rather than than a matter of acting. Just look at similar characters in other movies (like Tusshar Kapoor in "Gayab" or even Vinay Pathak in "Aaja Nachle" and "Dasvidaniya") and you will see how a role like that CAN be played. Sure, Shahrukh obviously has some comic talent and there are sequences in the movie where he does very well. But in general, I feel this role was just another piece of hackwork for him. Besides, he is really getting too old for roles like this.
As for the music, I'd say it is neither particularly bad, nor particularly good. A fairly good background score, one great song, the rest of the songs nothing special. Unfortunately, the video clips with song and dance have surprisingly little in common with the rest of the film (which really is a bad thing in a movie in which dancing plays a central role). To me, they are little more than grotesque showoffs of Shahrukh Khan's glitter and glamor, and all they seem to communicate is: "Hey folks, don't forget that I'm not this boring Surinder or this idiot Raj at all, because... I am Shahkrukh Khan, the superstar you all love and adore, the King of Bollywood!"
All in all, for a movie that is brought with much fanfare as the new Shahrukh Khan movie, I think RNBDJ is slightly disappointing. However, in spite of its several major and minor flaws, it should be said that it is still a nice and pleasant piece of footage, absolutely worth the effort of watching it at least once.