Kehtaa Hai Dil Baar Baar Hindi Movie
With Kehtaa Hai Dil Baar Baar, Paresh Rawal proves again that he is one of India's finest character actors.
As the Gujarati hotelier in New Jersey who has changed his original name Ranchodlal Patel to Roger Patel and who tries to preserve his heritage within his family fold in the US, Rawal gets everything absolutely right.
This is his third ultra-brilliant performance this year after Aankhen and Awaara Paagal Deewana.
His is a boisterous performance as the overbearing father who cannot contemplate any man's presence in the life of his loving daughter Ritu, played by Kim Sharma.
And Jimmy Shergill is the perfect foil.
Scenes between the over-possessive father and his wanting-to-please future son-in-law are well written and intelligently performed. Neeraj Vora's dialogues crackle with cross-cultural caustic wit.
Specially nice is the sequence where Sunder, a travelling Indian chef played by Shergill, bargains with Roger Patel over the catering of his elder daughter's wedding.
The Shergill-Rawal scenes in the second-half are obviously inspired by Robert de Niro and Ben Stiller in the Hollywood hit Meet The Parents. They also pre-empt this year's huge American hit-comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
The age-old tussle between a suitor and his prospective father-in-law lends itself effectively to a light, though never flippant, romantic comedy.
Debutant director Rahul Dholakia appears to have derived the elixir of entertainment from a whole ethos of films about NRI blues. Kehtaa Hai Dil Baar Baar isn't another Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge though. Though the characters are migrants they don't crave to return to motherland. Rather they live in a state of suspended nostalgia.
The character of Patel's assistant, played by Johnny Lever, makes passing references to Hindi films and music.
Cleverly and sensibly, Dholakia confines his compact tale to the US. Beautifully captured on film by cinematographer Ashok Kumar, New York and New Jersey are, for once, real locations and not tourist attractions in the story.
The first-half where Sunder woos the girl of his dreams with Indian food is warm and tasteful.
The second-half is Meet The Parents with Rawal testing, torturing and belittling the man his younger daughter wants to marry.
A couple of moments -- such as one where Kim Sharma hires a group of little girls to hold up a jigsaw sign saying "Sorry" -- are straight from the original.
But others such as Sunder trampling over Roger Patel's rare blue flowers and then substituting them with white flowers painted blue, or Patel's 15-year-old secret, a wig, flying off his pate at his elder daughter's wedding, are original and genuinely funny.
Amid a flurry of feel-good episodes, the director succeeds in slipping in some serious issues on migration when a young and single Indian mother in the US makes Sunder pose as her husband to get the green card.
The bond between the woman's son, played by Parzan Dastoor, and Sunder is heart warming. One of the film's memorable images is that of little Parzan and his friends cycling through the side streets of New York to deliver food to Sunder's dream girl.
Kehtaa Hai Dil Baar Baar isn't a monumental work -- it doesn't aspire to be one. It's a well-plotted, evenly directed romantic comedy.
The scenes of elaborately dressed Indians singing and dancing at weddings and other social occasions echo Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding.
The film sometimes does look hurried and perfunctory in patches, as though the project lost its steam before it was ready. But it makes much more pleasant viewing than some of the other entertainers churned out by Bollywood today.
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