Band Baaja Baaraat

Plot synopsis:
Bittoo Sharma (Ranveer Singh) is street-smart and fun-loving. He gatecrashes a wedding for the free food, and Shruti Kakkar (Anushka Sharma), an intelligent and quirky girl who is assisting the wedding coordinator, confronts him. Bittoo pretends that he is part of the film crew and makes a video of Shruti's performance when he sees her dancing at the wedding. The next day, he tries to impress Shruti with a DVD he compiled of her dance at the wedding. Shruti is not interested in flirting and reveals that her main interest is starting her own business and becoming a wedding planner.
Bittoo is under pressure from his father to come back to the village and work on the family sugarcane fields; Shruti is being coaxed into getting married as soon as possible by her relatives. After her exams are over, Shruti makes a deal with her parents that she has five years to get her business up and running before they arrange a marriage for her. When Bittoo's father comes to take him back to his village, Bittoo lies that he cannot come back because he is starting a wedding planning business. He goes to Shruti with the idea of becoming her partner in her business, but she refuses because she is worried that a partnership might lead to a romantic complication between them. She tells Bittoo that the number one rule of business is not to let love get in the way.
Shruti, with Bittoo tagging along, goes to meet Chanda Narang, a famous wedding planner, in the hopes that Chanda will hire her. Chanda shows no interest in Shruti but loses one of her male workers at that very moment and offers Bittoo the job. Bittoo accepts on the condition that he and Shruti are hired together. On the job, Shruti learns quickly that Chanda has exceptionally bad work ethics, cheats her clients with elaborate speeches but delivers nothing according to their wishes. When a client confronts Chanda, she blames Shruti. Bittoo angrily defends Shruti and the two of them quit and walk out together. They form their own company, Shruti's original idea of Shaadi Mubaarak (Congratulations on the Wedding). The begin with small, low-budget projects and gradually work their way up. They finally get their first big client by stealing them away from Chanda. The wedding is a huge success and that night they celebrate, ending up drunk and then having sex. Afterwards, Bittoo lies awake all night, worried, since Shruti had warned against this.
Bittoo starts behaving awkwardly around her, while Shruti realizes she has fallen in love with him. Shruti tries to reassure Bitto that she's not like other girls he fools around with. Bittoo is relieved, but misunderstands her words, and believes that she's telling him their night of passion didn't mean anything to her as well. He is relieved and cites her own rule that love should not get in the way of business. Shruti pretends to agree with him, but is despondent and heartbroken. She consoles herself and tries to act normally, but her resentment for Bittoo keeps increasing. This creates a tense atmosphere, eventually leading to a huge fight after the wedding of one of their clients. Shruti breaks the partnership, forcing Bittoo to leave the company. Bittoo starts his own wedding planning business called "Happy Wedding". However, they both perform terribly by themselves and both end up suffering huge losses, plunging them into debt.
They finally get a big contract, but it is contingent upon them working together. Facing debt collectors, they agree to partner up again one final time for the sake of recovering their losses. They divvy up the workload, eventually falling back into their old rhythm. The next day, Bittoo tells Shruti that they should be partners again. Shruti refuses his offer, telling him that she is getting married to her fiance, Chetan, and will move to Dubai. Bittoo is stunned and pesters her during the rest of the wedding preparations, coming up with various excuses why she shouldn't marry Chetan. As a last resort, he accuses her of her wanting to getting married to exact revenge on him. Shruti angrily answers Bittoo that she is doing it for her parents and because Chetan is right for her, and admits that she did fall in love with him, but since he didn't feel the same, she has moved on.
Bittoo realizes that he has been in love with Shruti all along, but was too scared to acknowledge the feelings he had for her. Desperate to win her back, Bittoo calls Chetan, telling him to bugger off as he loves Shruti. Hearing this, Shruti angrily confronts Bittoo. He tells Shruti that he was an idiot to have run away from her love, but also playfully chides her, asking why she couldn't have taught him true love the way she taught him the ropes of the business world. Shruti calls Chetan and calls off her engagement to Chetan and Shruti and Bittoo, together at last, share a kiss.
The film ends with Shruti and Bittoo dancing at their own wedding with all the clientele, friends and family to the tune of "Ainvayi Ainvayi".

Tags: comedy, romantic, feel-good

Review:
Maneesh Sharma's directorial debut Band Baaja Baaraat is one of the year's most refreshing and entertaining films.
The movie can be easily set apart from all the recent films made by Yash Raj Films, in that it is very simple and it actually shows the beauty of India through its two main characters of young wedding planners, who unexpectedly (for them), fall in love.
Sharma's direction is absolutely marvelous, and the film is totally benefited from the fantastic sets, props and costumes, which give the film an authentic feel, along with the characters which look more like real people rather than cinematic heroes.
And it is towards the second half when the story takes the audience by surprise and turns into a romantic drama that is quite moving and interesting.While watching the movie, it is quite inspiring to see how young people from relatively traditional middle-class families strive to make a career on their own.
The role of the male lead is played by newcomer Ranveer Singh, and he makes a confident debut, playing his character's different shades exceedingly well, at times so well that throughout the movie it is hard to believe it is his debut performance.
Director Sharma handles the scene very well, creating the right amount of romantic tension, using some really soothing music in the background, and of course the two young leads play the shy nature of the moment with conviction.
It is one of the beautiful scenes in the film (and I'm actually not one of those romantic fools).Towards the last portions of the second half, the movie gets more emotional, at times too much but thankfully unlike many bland attempts made in recent films in which everything turns into ancient melodrama, here it works.
Lead actors are debutant Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma , who has already had a box office hit with her debut film with SRK.The movie is fully set and shot in Delhi, and all characters speak with authentic Delhi-ite accent, it almost becomes difficult understanding after being so used to the Mumbaiya accent in all the other films.
Business goes successfully for them, and predictably, emotions come in between, causing a conflict in running the business together.The love conflict is not new, but the treatment given on the subject, and the whole execution of the movie is fresh and commendable.
However, I wish the ending would have been handled a different way, but I guess the director did not want to opt for clichéd ways.Anushka is very pleasant to watch, and she is looking very good in her simple girl-next-door getups, some scenes even with minimal makeup.
With Band Baaja Baarat, Anushka Sharma has completed her three picture deal with Yash Raj Films and in some way had gone full circle.
In her debut film Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi we first see her burst onto the screens in a pre-wedding scene - her character's, before tragedy doomed her to a hastily agreed upon marriage to Shah Rukh Khan's Surinder Singh as arranged by her father on his deathbed.
Here, she plays the wedding planner, and a number of major scenes see her both fussing around and enjoying herself in the weddings of her relatives and clients, and playing a role whose profession symbolizes some major shifts in conservative mindsets where weddings are outsourced to professionals behind the scenes rather than leaving it under the hands of relatives.And one wonders how bold the studio is in entrusting a major film to a new first time director Maneesh Sharma whose experience has come from working as an AD in other major films, and pairing the still relative newcomer Anushka opposite the complete rookie Ranveer Singh as her co-star.
This risk had paid off, as the end product is something relatively refreshing and spunky, going well with the themes, look and feel for Band Baaja Baaraat which is to break mindsets, and as teenage characters, epitomized the can-do, fearless spirit of entrepreneurship, wanting to try rather than to regret later in life.Anushka plays Shruti Kakkar, who is dead set in her ways in wanting to start her own firm Shaadi Mubarak in the wedding planning arena, and deflecting the usual route where a girl has to seek marriage after graduation and live a life that's more or less set, rote and formulaic.
At least up until the Intermission where things start to spiral a little out of control as emotions run high, and you'd come to expect the entire second half of the film to run aground with the usual fights and arguments, which in some way parallels the mood of the film where a split becomes problematic, and only when they work together as a team does the magic of the film happen.
The only spark in the second half as it plods itself to an inevitable end for a romantic film, is how sometimes we get a little callous especially in taking someone else for granted, and here we see how the female of the species is actually quite complicated when her heart is set aflutter, painting Bittoo inadvertently as the cad without feelings, and a silly boy at that when love comes knocking at his doorstep.On the characters' professional front I would have preferred it a little more if there's some poetic justice dished out in being more direct in being competitors to their brief mentor in the business, who perceived as the best turns out nothing more than a fraud when it comes to delivering quality service.
This of course gives rise to a myriad of supporting characters such as Maqsood the florist (Neeraj Sood), Rajinder Singh the caterer (Manmeet Singh) and Bittoo's friend Santy the musician (Revant Shergill) to join in as small suppliers hell bent on delivering quality as a business ethic.I've always loved Indian weddings put on screen, because that promises colour and spectacle, with lovely songs and energetic dances putting up quite a performance for an outsider like myself to witness and enjoy.
Anushka Sharma has grown from strength to strength with each film release, and Ranveer Singh is quite the discovery, with new male Bollywood heroes being quite the rare species in recent years, and his well oiled performance here doesn't betray the fact that he's into his debut.
Let's see what other films will appear over the horizon for this rookie.Band Baaja Baaraat is that spectacle that comes highly recommended, so catch it if you can as it nears the end of its run here..
I started this movie with a feeling just like I'm going to watch another regular comedy film.
It has romance, love, comedy, emotional drama(Thanks God, it didn't last long) and finally a heavenly pleasant happy ending.BBB is the movie of a college girl who is utterly ambitious about staring her own Wedding Management company and a guy, who fell for her during a wedding and situations lead both of them to become partners in their newly started venture "Shadi Mubarak".
How their relationship go through various Ups and Downs is shown as movie progress.Talking about the performances, firstly Ranveer Singh deserves huge amount of accolades for his awesome acting.
Wonderful acting by her.Though the movie overall captivate the mind of the audience, its second half has some lose moments where one can feel bored.
The moment hero heroine meet, you know that they will end up falling in love even if they are not romantically interested in each other.BAND BAAJA BARAT (B3) is also a similar tale of two youngster and it's not surprising to see that it's doing wonderfully well with its target audience.
While the slightly senior Anushka has done the best work of her short career, the film belongs to the new-comer, Ranveer Singh.
Ranveer singh who is making his debut through this film deserves an award for the best newcomer in the industry as not for a single moment he has looked like a newcomer.
This Romantic-Comedy has an interesting first hour, likable performances, soulful music & good direction working on it's advantage.'Baand Baaja Baaraat' is tale of 2 wedding planners, who later fall in love with each-other.
I went to see Band Baaja Baaraat with very low expectations, especially when 90% of Indian Rom-coms have disappointed me with subplots, un- needed comedy clichés, villains and skeletal plots, and also the fact that Hollywood gives us a lot of Rom-coms each year from High School to Dysfunctional Family, we have seen it all, so I expected nothing new here, but when the movie started rolling, the realistic script, life-like characters and flawless direction lead me till the end like a ride I enjoyed a lot.The movie has a story we have seen in many movies, but the treatment is fresh and natural.In short, its story of two middle class people who start a business as wedding planners on principle that no emotions will be involved, now as predictable as plot may seem, there are few surprises but even the predictable parts have been done with utter taste of freshness that you feel entertained.
For a romantic comedy, the balance between Romance and Comedy should blend and this movie does it perfectly.In acting department, the movie belongs to Anushka Sharma, she portrays her comic timing, dancing, emotions with perfection and dissolves in the role of Shruti, but no review is complete without mentioning the performance of débutante Ranvir Singh, whose confidence, energy and expressions held the movie together, the movie required very powerful performance from him and he delivered, in an year when star studded Anajana Anjani proved like piece of crap, Ranvir had tough task to bring people to theaters as a new-comer, but he showed the obsession towards his role.
The rest of supporting cast has nothing much to do as I mentioned before sub-plots are none here, the movie totally focuses on Ranvir and Anushka.The highest point in BBB is the treatment of the subject by director Manish Sharma, directing a first-time hero and a Genre which is very risky in India, he gave the movie a realistic touch from the word go, no un- necessary snori-cams, close-ups, beeps, its just focuses on characters and the story, Manish Sharma is a promising talent and I wish he chooses future subjects carefully and performs with the fan-base he made from this movie.The Cinematograpghy and set designs are a-class as the movie is based on wedding planners and weddings in South Asia are all fun, the movie portrays the colors, beauty and freshness with perfection, the songs are according to subject though Ainwayi Ainwai song is regular on my car stereo from days.The bottom-line is that 2010 was a great year for Hollywood as Inception, Black Swan, Social Network and Easy-A were Eye candies, but the Indian cinema suffered, 90% movies were just run-of-the-mill stinkers, apart from MY NAME IS KHAN, TERE BIN LADEN, this is the 3rd Indian movie I enjoyed, watch it with your buddies or Girl-friend, its a fun filled ride till the end...
The plus side is that the characters were more Indian mentality based as opposed to trying to act as westernized people which has been the case for quite a lot of young actors and actresses these days.Ranveer and Anushka complement each other very well, especially in the comedy scenes and the initial interaction.
This is also the first movie where her male costar actually looks more her age, unlike her pairings with Akshay and Shahrukh thus far.The initial story is fresh and good and it's interesting to see the two main characters set up their business and forge a partnership.
I liked the trio of supporting cast in the flower arranger, the cook and the music guy.Ranveer and Anushka have shown that you don't need a star father, uncle, or mother to make it in show business and that it's the ability to act rather than who's name you have that makes a big difference.
Band Baaja Baaraat directed by Maneesh Sharma is very good.The story is fresh.The screenplay is penned very well.The first half is smart and brave while the second half is bit slow paced and tends to get boring.The music is melancholic.Special mention of the dialogs and cinematography.The dialogs are smart,especially the one delivered by Ranveer Singh.The cinematography is striking.Performances-Newcomer Ranveer Singh acts very well.His comic timing is sure to be applauded.Anushka Sharma is very good,since her last two releases(Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Badmaash Company) she performed poorly.On the whole Band Baaja Baaraat is Fresh and Entertaining!.
I had heard lots of good reviews from people in forums or blogs that have trailers and news of this movie so I thought if it's getting a good rating from the "well-educated" and "higly-informed" internet community then it must be different from the standard bollywood fair of girl meets boy both fall in love have a bad patch and make-up in the end kind of story.
Is that all that we have learnt to do in movies in the last almost 70-80 years of cinema in bollywood which by now even a 10 yr old might come up with for a script writing homework given one.Not only have the filmmakers given less importance to the "love" between Shruti and Bittoo but made sure the intimacy between them happens so suddenly and brazenly that it leaves room for wondering whether this is going anywhere or its just another one night stand turned guilt sort of thing only.
It's not going to be a love story or performance people will keep remembering and talking abt even a year or maybe a few months from now so they have to find better projects to show their worth.In summary I'd say only go watch it if you're a die-hard bollywood movie maniac who has nothing better to do in life.
Secondly, though revolving around the same concept of opposites attract (the boy and girl first fight and then fall in love), BAND BAAJA BAARAAT comes up with a completely fresh style of narration, using the realistic ambiance of Punjabi Families and youth living in the areas of WEST DELHI.
Interestingly BBB's screenplay has also been brilliantly written by Habib Faisal, the director of DO DOONI CHAAR and his script gives its full support to the confident direction of the debutant director Muneesh Sharma.As a team they both are really capable of doing wonders in the near future and I would be eagerly waiting for their next.To be precise, BAND BAAJA BAARAAT wholeheartedly belongs to its lead pair of Anushka and the newcomer Ranveer.
In fact it was Ranveer and his remarkable portrayal of a directionless young graduate in the movie, which satisfied me a lot after a long long time and also made me feel like dancing on my seat at several instances.
And that's not all since BAND BAAJA BAARAAT also has one the most sensuous, emotional and touchy kissing scene ever filmed on the Indian Silver Screen between its leading pair.
After a long time I felt a director dealing with the issue of pre-marital sex with a more thoughtful, practical and appreciative approach in our Indian Cinema, which is a clear indication of our film-makers growing in their fearful stance towards the issue.On the music front, one starts liking the soundtrack by Salim-Sulaiman and lyrics by Amitabh Bhattacharya while he is watching the film but I still think that a big universal HIT song could surely have helped the film in a much better way.
And in the supportive performances Neeraj Sood stands out as the Flower Vendor while Manmeet Singh and Manish Chaudhari suit their roles perfectly.In all, BAND BAAJA BAARAAT is the most pleasant surprise of the year, which entertains many thousand times more than the big budget NO PROBLEM released along with it.
Finally, Yash Raj Films have a winner in their hand and they should continue doing the good work of giving chance to new kind of scripts, writers, actors and directors to come up with more movies like BAND BAAJA BAARAAT.
The debutant director Maneesh Sharma has done an excellent job in his first movie with a debutant actor Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma who is doing only her third movie.
The director has also captured the Delhi wedding scene in an excellent manner making this movie even more fun to watch.
Ranveer Singh has got great comic timing and surprisingly he is the one who actually makes the movie worth the watch.
Though the movie becomes a bit predictable towards the end, but still overall it turns out to be a very good watch.
Yashraj films are known for their lavish art direction which actually works very well for 'Band Baaja Baaraat' as the movie is about weddings.Maneesh Sharma's sincere storytelling has paid off.
There are slight plot holes and perhaps certain scenes didn't need to be added or shown in full extent in terms of it being a Bollywood film but nonetheless it still works because both Anushka and Ranveer have done a fab job at emoting the chemistry and dialogues.
You cannot watch this film without falling in love with Anushka Sharma first.
The film is a love story of Shruti and Bittu who keep denying to each other that they have started liking each other.
It made people take Anushka Sharma as a good actor and Ranveer Singh got his dream launch in a film that became a superhit.
In the second half all is well till it starts dragging in between but the end though typical is well handledDirection is good by Maneesh Sharma Music too was a big hit, Loot Gaya is the best song, My favourite is Aada Ishq rest too are goodRanveer Singh was very unconventional for his debut and leaves a huge impact giving a natural performance Anushka Sharma got her first solo hit in this film and did an amazing job though now such roles are become second skin to her rest all mostly unknown faces leave a mark.
Anushka Sharma plays Shruti with a die-hard conviction and Ranveer Singh slips into Bittu's character with amazing ease.