When opposites attract Shahid steals show

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Priyanka’s character offers much room and potential for comment on a better dancer in the film industry today? struggler in all its shades. Samir has defiantly left for Bollywood while his dad (Parikshat Sahni) is left wondering why his son needs to be a film hero in the first place.

Some of Priyanka’s best scenes suffer from the actress’ discernible over confidence. Where is the vulnerable quality in this single mother’s personality? In contrast, Uday is understated gentle and incharacter throughout. He knows the inner world of the geek.

Technically competent Love Impossible is not a bad film. It’s just a dull film.

The slim but confident plot moves on a smooth surface. This is a romcom with a pleasing, pungent flavour of Mumbai’s sorrowful underbelly that is hidden but palpable beneath the smooth surface.

While Shahid struggles for stardom, the narrative glides along at its own even pace seeking out the wannabe star’s life as a homeless road-dweller who sleeps in his car, and smirks at life’s cruelties.

There are some interesting sporadically-touching moments in the mish-mash of chaotic comic timing and misguided social messages. Watch Sushmita in that moment when all her cynicism about the validity of the sweet innocent village girl from Amritsar dissolves in a fleeting close-up. That moment is worth more than the entire film.

Dulha Mil Gaya seems to endorse garishness in place of glamour, hedonism rather than a highlife and a ceaseless stream of awkwardly-written jumble of scenes that would probably be rejected in a halfway decent American sitcom on the haughty heiress and the incorrigible playboy. Sushmita is every inch the haughty heiress. But how much of the rest of the cast ranging from Fardeen Khan to the over-the-top Howard Rosamayer (playing the effeminate man Friday) can she control?

One expects the screen to light up when ‘guest’ star Shah Rukh Khan turns up in the second half. Tragically the anarchic humour of the second half dips to an all-time low, leading to a fractured climax that even the most diehard romantic would find hard to stay awake for.

There are very few characters in the plot. There’s Genelia D’Souza playing a choreographer. Satish Shah, Mohnish Behl and Vikas Bhalla come and go like images seen from a moving train.

Yes, the first half has its interesting interludes. Shimmer’s first encounter on flight with Samarpreet (Ishita Sharma), the poor lost bride looking for her playboy husband in Trinidad, crackles because of Sushmita’s patronising preening. The way Shimmer takes the bereft Samarpreet under her wings could have been done with more restraint and panache.

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The gaudy interiors just don’t match with the natural scenic splendour of the Trinidadian outdoors. Artificiality is the middle-name of this wacky wedding on speed.

Right from the credit titles, where we see our struggler-hero prepare for another day of selling himself to an unthinking entertainment industry, a slightly seamless splendour lurks at the heart of this film about a Dilliwallah’s struggle to become a star in ‘Big Bad Bollywood’.

Cliched theme? Yup. But some times, some of the most endearing truths of life emerge from situations that work in a direction opposite to the unique.

The fact that Shahid plays the struggler helps... really helps. Here’s an enormously watchable actor who can take away the ‘acting’ from a character and just make you look at what is being said and done on screen without the baggage of the actor’s personal life being carried forward.

Shahid’s Samir is a portrait of a

Shahid goes through the predictable grind, but with such extraordinary sincerity and involvement, you suddenly realise the one truth about life’s vagaries. Every struggle, no matter how similar on the surface, is different underneath.

Shahid brings out all the shades, nuances and layers in the struggler’s inner life without bending the rules of commercial hero-giri. This is a far better performance than it outwardly seems.

Whether romancing the funny girl next-door, manifesting the disappointments of a struggler who’s getting emotionally worn-out waiting for the big moment, or interacting with the kids in school...Shahid just goes with the flow with a fluidity that goes beyond the dance floor.

Oh, about Shahid’s dancing...is there

Director Ken Ghosh keeps the narrative free of complexities beyond the struggler’s immediate preoccupations. And that suits the film’s moderate temperature just fine. Some moments, specially with the kids, exude the warmth of a ray of sunshine peeping through a partially open door. Watch the sequence where the kids share their lunch with their famished teacher... You’ll go Awwwww!

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Most of the time we get the feeling that the crew of this film went to Trinidad to party with noisy music for company. Someone forgot to carry the script for this corny Caribbean cruise. It’s largely unbearable even for diehard Sushmita Sen fans.

Though the choreography is uneven and the climactic dance a bit of a disappointment, Shahid comfortably keeps us watching the predictable but perky progression of this penniless pilgrim from the backseat of a car to the red-carpet.

While giving groovy guru-gyan to his students, dance teacher Shahid mentions Michael Jackson, Govinda, Prabhu Deva, Hrithik Roshan and Shia

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