cineTALK ENTERTAINMENT

ick (for the want of a better genre description) are not all seen to be chauvinistic idiots. Some of them are actually quite interesting. The nameless guy who follows (stalks?) Sonam’s Avni to every noisy function and even gets her into bed (and even gives her her rst big ‘O’, we are told) is so loud and cheesy, he is a scream.

Imagine if the drunk Kajol in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge had actually woken up in Shah Rukh Khan’s bed after a night of pleasurable sex.

Sonam’s Avni in Veere Di Wedding is in that position. Under the glaring light of pleasure, there is dark sorrow. Though outwardly every character is constantly partying, the hollowness of their existence is felt in throbbing threads of anger and regret.

Veere Di Wedding

Director: Shashanka Ghosh

STARRING Kareena Kapoor Khan, Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, Swara Bhasker, Shikha Talsania, Sumeet Vyas

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You only live once... right? Best to ll your life with as much festivity and joy as possible. Veere Di Wedding embraces the hollow yet strangely satisfying rituals (for some) of hedonistic living in Delhi’s upper class business community (the kind that Sonam Kapoor has married into) with a rush of fervour that leaves the audience breathless.

The director introduces us to the four childhood friends who grow up into designer glory by the time we settle down in our seats with our popcorn. Then the revelry never stops.

But wait, it’s not only about four frocked friends frolicking in froth. There are secret sorrows in all of this celebration. Kareena playing Kalindi the quietest, saddest, most confused and the most elegant of the four protagonists, has a distant far-away look in her eyes throughout the lm.

This could either be Kalindi’s aching regret for missing out on a normal family life (her beloved mum passed away and her dad married a giggly airhead played by the wonderful Ekavali Khanna). Or it could just be Kareena wondering if Taimur has had his Cerelac.

The very talented Swara Bhasker as Sakshi is a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered, almost-divorcee, splurging on her wealthy parents’ money while they sit and watch her wedding video wondering where they went wrong. Swara’s Anarkali Of Arrah effortlessly gets into Gucci.

Then there is the almost-unknown Shikha Talsania playing a young obsessive mother married to an understanding compassionate Australian (played by Edward Sonnenblick, the guy in Firangi whom Kapil Sharma kicked). Shikha’s comic timing has to be seen to be believed. Bollywood embraces the other-ness of glamour. And that’s good news for actors like Shikha.

Sonam Kapoor, looking like a million bucks, plays the hoity-toity prudish divorce lawyer looking for some manaction in her parched life. Sonam’s Avni is arid, waiting to be married. Her encounter with a spot of lust with a prospective groom is outrageously funny. Sonam is in splendid form lling that fancy clutch-bag with real emotions. Not easy to do.

Blessedly, the men in this chick

Some of the actors, so busy having a good time, fail to express the tangled mess of troubled unresolved issues that the script raises.

Kareena’s gay uncle (played by Vivek Mushran) and his live-in partner are concessions to tokenism that needed more eshing out. But the narrative is too restless and anxious, too impatient to move to the next level of fun, only to rip the revelry at the seams.

This lm is fun to watch. The quartet of gorgeous women are more entertaining than the four guys in Dil Chahta Hai. One of whom had famously said, “You can’t improve on perfection”.

True, but you can do a lot with imperfection. Especially if you have the wealth to play around with to hide your ongoing bouts of gaffes and faux pas. Veere Di Wedding is one helluva joyride, a designer’s delight and yet not quite the air-headed experience it loudly proclaims itself to be.

Subhash K. Jha

that work in the lm. The lm gets its Mahabharat sinfully wrong too: rstly, the teleserial by B. R. Chopra is shown being aired in 1998, when it concluded on Doordarshan in 1990; the names of the ve Pandavas are used as code names for John and his four colleagues thrown at the vortex of the Pokhran deserts even if it means pissing off the entire government machinery.