Mere Brother Ki Dulhan

Decades ago, there was a time when good movies and successful movies meant the same thing. Content was the king and filmmakers made good movies in order to be successful. But then things changed. Commercial success and good quality cinema became distant from each other. Chak De India and Company became less and Ready, Om Shanti Om and Tees Maar Khan started defining success.

This overdose of commercialism also results in films like Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (MBKD) where the corporates decide on the cast first and script comes later. Is script important to filmmakers or to the masses? Probably not. The success of Ready and Bodyguard assure that it's not. Then why fuss about the story of MBKD? Masses in the 100% occupied theater in the late night show were giggling and laughing. The guy sitting next was literally rolling on the floor. It doesn't matter if 10% of the people sitting in that theater did not like the script because they will not decide the success or failure of the film.

MBKD is a love triangle, pretty much a love rectangle, of Imran Khan, Katrina Kaif, Ali Zafar and Tara D'Souza. Ali, who breaks up his five year long relationship with Tara, assigns his younger brother Imran the task of finding him a bride in India. Imran finds Katrina and falls in love with her much to his own dislike and the trouble begins. Along come extremely unnatural dialog delivery, roughly cut sequences and superfluous song placements. As promising as the premise of the script sounds, it's the extremely unpersuasive first hour that makes the film a drag. Every actor is trying to defeat the other in overacting. On the plus side, the film has pretty good choreography especially in the title song where Chaiyan Chaiyan has been replicated in a very creative way and Madhubala which gives a new life to Jai Jai Shiv Shankar. Bosco-Ceaser, good show, boys.

The second half gets much better after a relatively mundane start and does get funny in a few segments. A big reason for this turnaround is Ali Zafar who has much more screen presence in the second half than the first.

Speaking of Ali's performance, it does have its shortcomings; however, it still remains the best act in the film especially in the second half. His comic timing is much better than Imran's although not as good as it was in Tere Bin Laden (TBL). He was pretty good in his scenes with Tara D'Souza in the second half. He has a pretty special talent in voice variations which excelled in this performance and saved grace in the second half. Most of his shortcomings could be attributed to the director's weak treatment. From Ali's perspective, it was a good movie to sign. With TBL he grabbed the attention of filmmakers and he needed this to grab the audience too and it makes sense for his future in the industry. He needs to improve his dancing skills though.

Imran disappoints. After an entertaining Delhi Belly, this looks like a hasty effort from the actor. Utterly artificial scenes with his childhood friends and no chemistry whatsoever with Katrina. Romantic scenes between the two looked amateurish to say the least. It was another one of those Break Ke Baad and I Hate Luv Storys types of performances by Imran. Katrina Kaif surprised on a few occasions. In fact, in the first half, she was probably the best of the lot mainly because others were pretty bad. Poor bike scenes and poor rock concert song where she could not control her overacting but decent otherwise. Her role was very badly conceived. A 27 year old acting like a 13 year old is never funny.

Tara D'Souza did well in her brief role; however, she was again portraying a confusingly written character. Other supporting cast was a drag except for Zeeshan Ayub who played Shobit.

A huge frustration was the cinematographer Sudeep Chatterjee. I'm still struggling to understand what he was trying to do. One of the worst displays of camera works I have witnessed in recent past. 60% of the film was in extreme close-ups with only the actors' faces visible on the huge screen. Camera looked as if it was going to go inside their noses. Sudeep has an impressive career record with Chak De India, Kaminey, Guzarish and a fairly impressive Road. I believe he was probably working on a brief from the director for that completely not-so-innovative camera work.

Which brings us to probably the biggest culprit of the film, the second Ali associated with it i.e. Ali Abbas Zafar. He wrote and directed the film and more often than not failed on both. A very weak script which depended a lot on acting and dialogues, hence, succeeded at some places and failed at others. The story was half cooked and a mixture of several films previously seen like Tanu Weds Manu, Jab We Met etc. Direction was flawed, full of unnecessary sequences, unplanned songs and even continuity errors like shoes changing from within scene.

Overall, MBKD could have been and should have been a much better film if, and a huge if, it had a better script, better direction, better acting and more prominent role for Ali Zafar. It still might be a successful outing on the box office, because as I said earlier, commercial success has new definitions in this day and age, however, it's pretty far away from being a good film.

Having said that, I do not mean that I liked it. I almost dozed off while watching the first half. Sole reason that I gave it 6/10 is because it should not be rated below Ready.

Most of the talent has been wasted in the movie due to a lackey script. I had high expectations of the movie after watching the trailer and it all landed in a dash. Ali Zafar was a delight to watch in Tere bin Laden but is totally wasted in this movie. Imran khan has utterly failed to impress with his sole expressions. I was confused if he was John Abraham I was watching. Only delight to watch if Katrina Kaif and I am not talking about her performance. Its her sheer exuberance that got me through the movie.

Plot is wafer thin and is highly predictable. The movie has it moments but if you have watched the trailer, you have it all. Go watch it if you have NOTHING to do at all...

This review is quite short but I will be glad if it helps. MBKD starts of with Luv (Ali Zafar) breaking up with his longtime girlfriend. Being fed up with his hookups he finally decides to settle down and assigns the job of finding a suitable bride to his younger brother Kush (Imran Khan). So Kush gets on the job and finally finds a girl Dimple (Katrina Kaif). Both families meet up and get along with each other. Problem starts when Kush and Dimple realize that they are in love with each other.

During the first half the film runs slowly while the second half is more enjoyable thanks to the comic timing of Ali Zafar who plays his character very well. Katrina plays her role of a mad, carefree girl very well while Imran plays his role fairly, nothing special about him. The film doesn't have a strong script but runs smoothly on the acting of the stars. Music is good. Overall MBKD is a good enjoyable fair that you wont get bored watching. When every movie maker resorts to crude jokes for humor, MBKD is one film that can be watched with your family.

MBKD is a pure breed of Bollywood movie. There is a lot of dancing, songs, celebration, over-acting, a few good jokes (again: very few), masala... If you like to watch such movies where you don't have to use too much of your brain after a hard week's work, you might enjoy this.

Watching MBKD is insult to intelligence and a boring experience. You know you are in the wrong theater when you get up and see people around you in deep sleep. I just couldn't wait for the movie to complete. Any movie that produces that kind of effect can only be hit because of its stars, great advertising and distribution.

The movie is flawed at many instances, but for me the most important thing in a movie is 'the story'. The story has nothing innovative or even interesting. The overall story is predictable and illogical. However, the story has a small twist at the end, which was not predictable (bad news for people who wanted the movie to end soon). You won't predict how unwanted 'the twist' at the end is. For some reason our film industry forgets that making a 'funny story' doesn't mean making a 'stupid story'.

The good thing in the movie is Katrina and her dancing skills. She can make any song look good with her size-zero body. Katrina looks good in any movie until she opens her mouth. Katrina's acting in this movie is childish and 'not cute'. Katrina's character was supposed to be of a cute and chulbuli girl, similar to Kareena Kapoor's character in 'Jab we Met'. But a combination of 'Bad acting' and inability to speak proper Hindi made Katrina look stupid.

Acting of Imran and others is equally artificial. But Imran doesn't look as bad as the overacting of 'Ali Zafar' who is Imran's brother in the movie. For some reason everyone in the movie have stopped working and are behind getting 'Ali Zafar' married.

After watching this movie, I felt so proud of myself. I always felt that Bollywood movies are just waste of time. This movie reinforced my

thoughts. This is just a total waste of time. I would say watch AAJ TAK

news. They are much more funny that this movie. I am still trying to

figure if this movie was comedy or tragedy................ Well save

some time and money....... Don't waste either for this movie.

I m just completing ten lines for text so ignore the following.

i m not judgmental but this movie sucked big time. I was waiting for it to be done. i held my patience..... but this is so much dragging.... i finally started doing my work. didn't waste my time. Khan did a good job. somehow katrina didn't fit in the role. but its my view. some people will like this movie. just depends how much you admire Hollywood movies. if someone can understand Hollywood movies, will hate bollywood movies. but for some people for whom English is a big problem, will like the crappy Hindi movies.