They are so comfortable together you could mistake them for a real-life couple. But Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan are just faking it in "Badrinath Ki Dulhania". And if this is how well they jell in pretence, I wonder what they would look like on screen if they were really in love.
"BadrinathKi Dulhania" is what we would call a sure-shot winner. There's no way it could go wrong at the box office. It isn't great cinema. But it's cinema that loves cinema. It slurps on the juice and gravy of the conventions and licks it down uncaring of staring eye. It's fulsome in its love for Bollywood traditions.
The trailer opens with the legendary voice of radio announcer Ameen Sayani and proceeds to show us Varun and Alia thumping the floor to the sound of Bappi Lahiri's rip-off "Tamma tamma".
"Badrinath Ki Dulhania" is also a kind of tongue-in-cheek homage, partly serious but done with a whole lot of spoofy spiffiness. As in the courtship conventions of films from the 1970s and 1980s the hero hounds the heroine everywhere …in her dreams, on the laptop, in a bus, at an eatery and so on. Alia handles the unwanted attention with a refreshing blend of disapproval and amusement.
Her comic timing in her semi-urban avatar is as charming as her metropolitan posturing in "Dear Zindagi" and her Bihari migrant act in "Udta Punjab". Is there no end to what this girl can do?
As for Varun, his comic timing and his utterly endearing ability to laugh at himself -- watch him in the scene where he's being clicked by a pesky photographer -- makes him move far ahead of his competition -- if we can call Aditya Roy Kapur, Arjun Kapoor and Sidharth Malhotra Varun's competitors.
Refreshingly, the trailer of the film takes us into the Indian heartland. These are people who really love Hindi films and their songs. They are not faking it in London, Paris and Amsterdam, like Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma in "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil".
Alia and Varun have actual fun with the conventions of the past.
This is a 'desi' film with a big 'desi' heart beating fast when "Tamma tamma" plays on the radio.
It can't get more filmy than this.
