UNDER-COOKED BIRYANI

DAAWAT-E- ISHQ

STARRIN G: Aditya Roy Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra and Anupam Kher

DIRECTOR: Habib Faisal *"lrlr , .}r~'r

There are two different films tucked away into this one big undercooked biryani of a film.

Daawat-e-/shq is not as inviting as the title suggests. Food is important to the plot, yes. And hats off to writer-director Habib Faisal for tempering the texture of the tale with a culinary flavour.

You wish food were the driving force in this freewheeling tale of love. But no, this film is more about a Muslim girl's search for a life beyond finding a suitable match Faisal's special gift as a filmmaker is to portray the Indian middle-class in all its squalid glory. He doesn't sweep the murk under the threadbare carpet. He takes on the quirks guilt and the conflicts of the 'mu ddle class'headlong.

Till a certain point the narrative in Daawat-e-lshq tells us some pungent home truths about the over-educated unmarried middle-class girl's plight as she is forced to squeeze into an arranged marriage.

Anupam Kher and Parineeti Chopra are so convincing as father and daughter looking for a suitable groom that you tend to forgive the film's aggressive indiscretions that prop up prominently and intrusively in the second-half.

Yes, there are two films here. The 'Hyderabad 'film in the first-half is effusive and endearing. The second movement takes us to Lucknow where father and daughter put up a big con show to trap an unsuspecting dulha for Parineeti.

It is tragic to see the film's early excellence fall apart piece by piece to reveal a plot with little substance accommodating characters with a big plot up their sleeve.

Everyone behaves as if they are part of a high school play based on H.S. Rawall's Mere Mehboob. They run around exchanging giggles, kebabs and qawwalis.

Is Sajid-Wajid's music homage to the sound of Laxmikant-Pyarelal in the 1970s or a straight rip-off?

The intention of doing a film t hat involves dowry and deception cannot be doubted. Faisal means we!!. Alas, his storytelling doesn't convince us of his intentions

Performance-wise Parineeti and Anupam are a delight. Parineeti again proves herself a natural-born scenestealer. That's relatively easy when your co-star is hell bent on being a caricature.

Aditya Roy Kapoor with his kohl-

The stunts are shot in the spir it of item songs and strewn across the narrative with scarcely any room for the characters to breathe.

Bang Bang gets the boredom quotient bang-on. The rest is all noise and fury about a diamond, Kohinoor no less, stolen from a British museum. The way the thief carries the precious "diamon d " (which looks like a paperweight) around in his pocket goes to show how little a certain group of filmmakers respect the audience's intellect.

They think Hrithik dancing, singing, fighting and taking off his shirt amounts to entertainment. Little do they know.

SUBHASH K. JHA laden eyes and pseudo-Lucknowi drawl is a disaster. His painfully self-conscious performance reduces the film to a pantomime of good intentions.

I came away with the baap-beti relationship rather than the love story.

As for food, I craved for more.

S UBHAS H K. JHA