Sandwiched between a good and a bad movie
‘Dharala Prabhu’ was not at all in my list, strictly not. Because I loved ‘Vicky Donor’ so much, the experience of it still being fresh in my memory I wasn’t even thinking of watching its remake. I precisely remember during ‘Vicky Donor’ release, I went to watch some other movie and had absolutely no clue about the film. So ‘Vicky Donor’ was a riot, it was totally unexpected. I felt the same freshness of that of ‘Band Baaja Baraat’. Similar to the latter, the former too had excellent leads, they seemed to me made for this role. Having seen the Fair & Lovely girl first time on screen, I became a huge fan of Yami Gautam post that. She had done an excellent job in the film. Needless to say, Ayushmann Khurrana too was so charming and Annu Kapoor was fantabulous. Just the way he says ‘sperm’ in that diction was a treat to watch.
At that time, it was unimaginable to even think of such a movie in Tamil but in a span of around eight years things have changed. ‘Pink’ was remade as ‘Nerkonda Paarvai’ that too with a big star like Ajith. And now ‘Vicky Donor’ to ‘Dharala Prabhu’. The director has to be appreciated first up for making a film which doesn’t end up being sleazy but something everyone could watch. Then the casting. Vivek was terrific, in fact he holds the whole film together, yet couldn’t match up to Annu Kapoor level because it was one of his best roles. Harish Kalyan was a really good choice for Ayushmann Khurrana’s role. He could do romantic scenes with ease. Only the frustration could have come better. But Vivek manages for Harish’s shortcomings. Disaster was Yami Gautam’s role, Tanya Hope was so out of place.
The movie luckily was not a scene by scene remake. Also, it tried to be sensible with the things here instead of going all out ROFL. A couple of main twists, here Prabhu (Harish Kalyan) is a football player who wants to get into a government job, with a window seat in third floor and looking at the mount road. It didn’t work for me. I’d have expected a passionate person who wanted to go to the football field but the fact that it was written without any sort of guilt for Prabhu character was a good thing to have happened. He proudly says that he goes through sports quota, he has a ‘gethu’ (pride) in saying so. That’s the closest a movie character can come to being practical.
Another scene was the one where Nidhi’s (Tanya Hope) parents come to talk to Prabhu’s parents about marriage. The fact that she’s divorcee would be known to the groom’s parents only during that time in Hindi but here it’d have been known already. Another sense of practicality. Because of both these junctures, the sequences are mellowed down but film gets a more rooted approach. Here people look serious and it jumps to the song, in Hindi people would be laughing when the talk goes on. Drastically different but Hindi one works like a charm. Here it’s just a normal scene. In fact, even the grandma here was mellow, in Hindi she was a Rockstar. But Sachu does a great job for that role.
The problem with the film was that, it was not so bad to shoo it off, neither was it so good to laud it. I watched the movie in two parts. Once till interval and the second part the other night. Ideally it should not happen but usually when it happens, either you are so keen to complete the second part or so disinterested to do so. But with this film I was truly in between. Neither was I interested nor was I disinterested. It was just like turning to another chapter in a book causally. I guess that’s what made the film a casualty.
constantscribbles 