Badrinath Ki Dulhania

A follow up to the first movie starring Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan, Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania, is Badrinath ki Dulhania, the story of Badrinath Bansal from Jhansi (Varun Dhawan) and Vaidehi Trivedi from the IIT specializing city Kota(Alia Bhatt). An educated, focused, ambitious and much against the norms questioning and castigating the rules and customs of the society is Vaidehi, whose ultimate motive and aim is to get her sister Kritika married and place herself as a self-made earning woman, who isn’t dependent on her man and is all committed and determined to set her future up.

While she is so, her society leaves no stone unturned to belittle her and her ideologies, compelling her to marry and surrender her aspirations and her own self to her future husband. Fortunately or unfortunately, the word ‘compromise’ fails to exist in her dictionary and the fact that she is worth more than sheer toiling her sweat in the kitchen as a wife, she decides to risk her family to her career and sets herself free of all the constraints. While the director puts forth Vaidehi on one hand, the other side of the coin has Badrinath Bansal, an offspring of a rich well-to-do affluent yet stereotypical orthodox narrow minded father. Badri falls head over heels for Vaidehi and after the innumerable hurdles and hassles posed in the love story of these two, everything, quite expectedly, falls in the right place and they live happily ever after.

Well, the point to be noted before I say anymore is the fact that the movie is pretty predictable. The audience is expected to not await or reckon a ground breaking or an outrightly different script, but leave with a getaway of a 2 hour 20 minute movie circumlocutioning about women empowerment and parity between men and women. Speaking of the acting, with an amazingly young spirited wonderful star cast of Alia and Varun, the young blood had already created quite a str before the release and post the watch, it would just be an understatement to say they are probably the shining future of the Indian Film industry. The impeccable comic timing of Varun and Alia’s nuances at every twitch of her expression is just as appreciable. I may eulogise the film in the department of acting, but wouldn’t give a second thought to critically evaluate and not furl its flag as an entertainer. It rather got me slouching in the seat at points when it felt as overtly dragged despite a not-so-long duration of the film. The director Shashank Khaitan, contrary to the first flick, gives this the Bihari touch and out and out focuses on the linguistics, thereby making it a state specific film than being pan India. There is this usage of Bihari language in the film to such an extent so much so that it gets to one’s nerves at a certain point.

Another factor that contributed to the success and popularity of the film is its album. With romantic songs and mesmerizing lyrics of ‘Humsafar’ and ‘Roke na ruke naina’ and foot tapping numbers as enchanting as ‘Tamma Tamma’ and the title track ‘Badrinath ki Dulhania’, it had raised the expectations and excitement of the audience. In all, the movie has been rather boring and below par.

I would give it a 2.5 out of 5 stars.