Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania

Humpty Sharma ki Dulhaniya is many things but not a ‘tribute’ to DDLJ and neither a remake of that classic. The problem with making a remake of a classic is, you can never do it right. You can never make people who love original fall in love with your ‘updated’ version. But thanks to the Lord, Shashank Khaitan wasn’t trying to do so.

Stay Calm and let the director use tried
and tested formulas of DDLJ

We have free spirited, eccentric Kavya (Alia Bhatt) and street-smart, passionate Humpty (Varun Dhawan) who falls in love when Kavya goes to Delhi to buy herself a “Designer wala Lehenga” (yep, that's the 2014 version of Kajol going for European tour). 

It has a feeble first half and many sequences which are just not good. Sample this: Humpty's two out of work friends gives him lacs to purchase "Designer wala Lehenga" for Alia. And to top this, Humpty's father too withdraws his emergency savings for Alia's "Designer wala Lehenga".

There’s also some ingredient to make you remember DDLJ, but that’s when the plot thickens.

The second half is little more engaging, dramatic and still has some space for funny sequences. This time the Amrish Puri of the story i.e. Mr. Singh (a brilliant Ashutosh Rana) isn’t a fool to not realize what Humpty is up to. And that’s where we really see the original imprints of our director who also happens to be screen writer.

*Spoiler Alert* Mr. Singh asks Humpty to find a single flaw in the boy (Siddharth Shukla) he has selected for Kavya, and he will marry her daughter to him.

Enters Angad Bedi (Siddharth Shukla), the guy with flawless and charmful attitude, that everyone falls in love with (except ofcourse Kavya).

And this is where story really takes off with some really humorous sequences by Varun Dhawan and two of his friends Poplu (Sahil Vaid) and Shontu (Gaurav Pandey).

The climax is pretty lame and could have been done better. There are lots of loose ends and movie ends abruptly. It feels like cameraman ran out of reel and they had to just end it.

The music was nothing to write about and certainly pretty average for a Dharma Productions movie.

As for performances, both Varun and Alia looked good here, provided that you don’t compare those two to SRK and Kajol at any point during the movie. Varun is slowly and surely coming good, but it is Alia who surprise me with each movie. As dumb as she is perceived (and most probably she is) to be, she is in top form. She is most likely to replace likes of Deepika, Kareena, Priyanka Chopra (although I doubt if Priyanka is more threat to herself rather than anyone else).

Also the chemistry is enjoyable and not clichéd. You can see that they have known each other for long and have worked with each other.

The real heroes of the movie

No it doesn't end on platform and yep it should have!

But it is the supporting cast that you should really look forward to. The duo of Sahil Vaid and Gaurav Pandey as Varun Dhawan’s friends steals the show. And it was so good to see Ashutosh Rana after so long. Why isn’t he doing more movies? He didn’t try to be Amrish Puri, because, no one can but he did made his character strong yet enjoyable.

Sidharth Shukla has a good but not a memorable debut. He was underplayed and the character was one dimensional.

But as they say, all’s well that ends well, and this movie didn’t end with a strong climax.

5/10 – 1 for Alia-Varun chemistry, 2 for supporting casts and 2 for some good dialogues and some original writing from Shashank Khaitan even if it suffers from hangover of DDLJ. None for songs.