#Khubsoorat Hindi Bollywood Film movie review, Johnson Thomas, Rating: * *

#Khubsoorat Hindi Bollywood Film movie review, Johnson Thomas, Rating: * *

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#Khubsoorat Hindi Bollywood Film movie review, Johnson Thomas, Rating: * *

#Picks&Piques/SnippetFilmReviews/JohnsonThomas19Sept2014
#Khubsoorat(Hindi) Rating: * * A Royal PAIN. #HrishikeshMukherjee must surely be rolling in his grave at this point- what with his rib-tickling laugh delight getting the rough shod re-treatment with an insipid Sonam trying to step into Rekha’s iconic shoes. #AnilKapoor’s bankrolling of this project alongside Disney is surely a misbegotten one ‘cos it’s likely to sound the death-knell for the careers of both his daughters. This is a travesty of a comedy, nothing justified, nothing gained. Everyone’s a loser here other than #FawadKhan and #KaizadKotwal #RatnaPathakShah who provide resounding restraint in an otherwise hysterical, ill defined class clashing misadventure! #Disney #UTV #ShashankaGhosh #SiddharthRoyKapoor

This class-clashing un-believable love drama is strident, shrill , trite and given to unbecoming hysterics. No patch on HrishikeshMukherjee’s original.

Hindi Film Review

Johnson Thomas

A Royal PAIN

Film: Khubsoorat

Cast: Sonam Kapoor, Fawad Afzal Khan, Kirron Kher, Ratna Pathak Shah, Amir Raza Hussain, Kaizad Kotwal

Director: Shashanka Ghosh

Rating: *  *

Attempting a remake of a much loved movie – the Hrishikesh Mukherjee directed, ‘Khubsoorat’ top-lining Rekha in an iconic role, is riven with hurdles for sure. But Shashanka Ghosh of ‘Dasvidaniya’ fame was unperturbed enough to play around with the storyline and even managed to convince a ‘particular’ Anil Kapoor and ‘sharp’ Disney(India) to bankroll it.

The resultant is sheer bedlam- one that could even induce an insomniac into his deepest slumber. I was lucky( or was it unlucky?) enough to have had my essential share of rest before the preview showing so I had to sit-up and take notice of every trite and unbecoming snag in the narrative of this dispassionate class-clashing love drama that tests one’s forbearance to the limits. To make the going worse you have an insipid Sonam Kapoor hogging the show as clumsy dimwit Dr Milli Chakravarthy ( can’t figure out what she specializes in ..physiotherapy?Occupational therapy? Chiropractice? Or is it sports medicine? Nothing is clear here) while an over-the-top Kirron Kher plays to the gallery as her irreverent punjabi Mother , Manju, providing the lame mechanics for cheap laughter.

A Disney-Anil Kapoor films’ misadventure, this intended class clashing romance has little to excite and even less to intrigue. Terribly clichéd, unadmirably vacuous, pitiably mundane and bundled in wafer thin artifice, this film has the power to put even an insomniac to sleep. 


Dr Milli Chakravarthy(Sonam Kapoor) has worked magic on Dhoni and other IPL match winners and once she takes on the role of the Royal magician…oops Royal Doctor, she is bound to make her mark there too. Her rambunctious( the way Kirron Kher plays it read as obnoxious) Punjabi mother Manju has even begun counting the days to the Royal wedding she envisions for her dear daughter. So the intentions are sealed in the first few frames and the rest of the narrative concentrates on getting everything in place for that firmed-up eventuality. Like getting the haughty Royal Prince Vikram Singh Rathod(Fawad Afzal Khan) to break-up with his royal fiancée Kiara(Aditi Rao Hydari), coaxing the Maharaja(Amir Raza Hussain) into getting back on his feet, and giving the Maharani(Ratna Pathak Shah) no choice but to accept the ill-attuned pairing as a fait accompli. 



Don’t know why Anil Kapoor saw fit to bank roll this under-developed script but one thing is certain- his hopes of aiding both his daughters’ careers in films will see a huge setback with this clunker.  Disney is known to scuttle even completed projects if they don’t turn out up to their expectations and it beats me why they chose to allow this sleeper to get through their hawk-eye.

Thankfully the setting and the rest of the cast including a well-suited Prince Vikram Rathod(Fawad Afzal Khan) , his Disciplinarian mother Rani sa(Ratna Pathak Shah), his father, Maharaja(Amir Raza Hussain) and the doctor’s Bengali father(Kaizad Kotwal) spare us enough blushes that we may suffer through this royally monogrammed misadventure.

Predictability is a surefire recipe for boredom and this film has plenty of it. In fact, there’s no explaining away the fact that right from the start the agenda is announced loudly and clearly- the good hearted fake sounding Milli is expected to get the haughty Prince to press his suit notwithstanding his impending marriage to royalty. Love is thrust at the audience without any finesse or conviction with all the sublety of a rampaging bull on heat.

A supposedly too busy Prince appears to have a lot of time on his hands -he keeps bumping into the guileless extremely annoying , garishly dressed Milli- as she goes about her job of getting the Maharaja back on his feet following a ten year old tryst with tragedy which left him incapacitated and bereft of hope. In between there’s some crass depiction of class clashes which ring false because of some extremely poor writing and plotting. When the director calls kiss, the the Prince and the blah girl lock lips and seal their fate for happily ever after- love is as simple as that in such achingly familiar bollywood tripe.

Everything appears fake- even the so called Princely abode appears to be impoverished of servants and personnel. Extras flit in and out of the frame only for special occasions like an impromptu celebratory dance. Even the traditional tropes and linguistic punctuations are missing from the enactment. There’s no enlivening this uninteresting, feckless, unbelievingly dull exercise in futility. Even Sneha Khanvilkar’s  beautiful compositions sound out of sync with what’s happening on screen.  There’s no chance of  careers being established or made on the strength( or lack of it) of this feeble salvo. Much more would need to be done to accomplish that. This one’s a royal PAIN…no less!

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