Here's the thing with Rohit Shetty movies: we know it's going to be the leave-your-brain-behind type. We know it's not going to make any sense. We know the internet trolls and the twitterati are going to bite into the movie even before it releases.
And yet we watch it. For the simple reason that he makes us laugh.
Somewhere in the middle of Chennai Express, the jokes had dried up, the quips and the crisp dialogue had thinned, and the monotony was there to be seen. Singham Returns exposed that even further.
But this one takes the cake.
Dilwale is Rohit Shetty's worst movie. It's painfully fake and hopelessly contrived; an assembly-line piece of garbage that mistakes the audience for a fool.
So we have Shah Rukh Khan playing Kaali (go figure!), a retired son of a mafia boss, who lives with his younger brother Veer (Varun Dhawan) in Goa, the setting of many of Shetty's films. Veer's love interest is Ishita (a lovely Kriti Sanon). And Kaali has a brief, turbulent love-hate past with Meera (Kajol) in Bulgaria, which catches up with him later in his life.
In the midst of all this there are mafia bosses, a local Goan don for the villain, a sidekick (Varun Sharma, aces it) and the usual Rohit Shetty comedians thrown in for good measure.
This is a movie laced with stereotypes. Be it the step brothers with one of them being an orphan, or the painfully obvious plot twists, ones which can be seen from a mile away.
In terms of performances, there's not much to do for Kriti Sanon except for looking really pretty. Varun Dhawan has done this kind of goofy man-child role in Main Tera Hero before; he's pretty much the same here.
Kajol looks simply stunning, she's aged beautifully. Her acting credentials were never in doubt, but she's saddled with such a hopeless role and cringeworthy dialogue.
Shah Rukh sleepwalks through this role, just like he's done in Happy New Year and Chennai Express. He's an absolute bore; his eyes grim and his face stoic.
What is most disappointing is that the hullabaloo surrounding this movie was about the coup that Shetty managed to pull off with SRK and Kajol, unquestionably Bollywood's most chemically potent pair, and yet their chemistry is almost non-existent in Dilwale. Not being able to capitalize on SRK-Kajol's pair just goes to show what a shoddy mess the movie is. Yes, there are the occasional sparks, like the silent nod to the 'palat' scene from DDLJ, but those are few and far between.
Almost all the lines fall flat, which is disappointing, especially coming from dialogue writers like Sajid-Farhad. The scenes look farcical, the acting extremely fake, and the jokes forced. Barely a couple of laughs are generated, mainly due to the ever-reliable Johnny Lever and another Priyadarshanesque montage leading to a hilariously confusing story.
Shetty has always been 'inspired' by various films, as evidenced by the Golmaal series, Bol Bachchan and even Singham. With Dilwale, not only has he taken bits and pieces from trashy potboilers of the 80s, but this time he's gone further and taken a page out of a TV show.
In the middle of the once-amazing CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, protagonist Ted Mosby meets a woman called Stella, and due to shortage of time, he takes her on a two-minute date, an extremely endearing montage, and one of the highlights of the show. Our man Shetty blatantly copies the concept, and it's neither impressive nor heartwarming.
It's a shame to see Rohit Shetty start taking the audience for granted to such an extent. It's even more shameful that Shah Rukh Khan agreed to not only act in this mess, but also produce it. Dilwale is a mistake that will be difficult to erase.
Somewhere in the middle of the movie, Varun Dhawan is proposing to Kriti Sanon. And in a bid to go all out, he plans to do the one thing that simply can't fail in Bollywood - SRK's arms-raised pose.
He prays, 'Bhaiya, sambhaal lena'. Sure, he gets the girl. But not even his bhaiya can save this atrocity of a movie.
