Shahrukh Khan has a habit of proving me wrong time and again since the time he has entered into the film industry. First I had commented (in private!) that this ‘Coming from TV’ ‘over’-actor would never survive for long; well, he has gone on to become a megastar! Then I said that Devdas would prove to be a box-office disaster and it went on to become the biggest hit of that year. So when Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi proved me wrong again by winning over the audiences, I was kind of prepared for that. By the way, this time around my objection was to Adi- Aditya Chopra’s choice of title, which I felt was too arcane, too desi for the contemporary taste!

Watching RNBDJ (after all the media had hailed it as a big hit!) was a mixed bag experience. In one of H.H. Munro alias Saki’s short stories, one lady comments on the kind of stories she likes: “True enough to be interesting and not true enough not to be tiresome!” Adi seems to have followed that dictum but I felt that the man who had written DDLJ has not really found the golden mean after his first mega-blockbuster. Mohabbaten was hackneyed and even though RNBDJ is lot better, it still comes up short on imagination and originality. As Shahrukh himself confessed in one of his TV interviews, in RNBDJ they have tried to make a mix of Chak De India's realism and Om Shanti Om’s escapism. But in the end, the escapism in RNBDJ far outweighs the realism and in fact, that lessens the overall impact of the film.

The story begins with an ordinary man Surinder Sahni aka Suri- a world-weary, boring, mousy mustached simpleton who works as a clerk in Punjab Power. Suri’s straight- forward life turns on its head when out of the blue, he ends up marrying his ex-professor’s daughter Tani (Anushka Sharma) in extraordinarily tragic circumstances! The young bride, who loses her fiancé and her father one after another in a single day, has agreed to marry Suri in deference to her dying father’s wish. Right in the beginning, Tani confesses to Suri that she won’t be able to love him but she would still try her best to be a good wife! Now begins Suri’s attempts to win her love. And how does he do that? With the help of his garrulous hair-dresser friend (Vinay Pathak), Suri turns into Raj – a garishly attired, over-smart, loose- talking, clean-shaven youngster who becomes Tani’s dance- partner when she enters a dancing contest with her hubby’s permission. Tani never realizes that ‘Raj’ is ‘Suri reinvented’ and slowly starts to feel attracted towards him. Suri faces the dilemma where his wife is falling for someone else and that ‘someone’ is he himself in a different garb-or rather he himself without a moustache! How will this unique love-triangle resolve?

The famous Yashraj technical excellence once again proves itself and the cinematography and choreography (particularly in the period- song Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke!) are excellent. Salim-Sulaiman’s music fails to come up with anything memorable apart from Haule Haule but still the songs ‘look’ okay on screen. Vinay Pathak is impressive in his gaudy over-the-top role, giving further evidence of his versatility. Anushka Sharma looks nice and does well for most part of the film but her ability to handle emotional scenes is rather limited. But then it is only her first film!

Coming to Shahrukh, his portrayal of the simpleton Suri is memorable for its sincerity and attention to detail but his transformation into the smarty Raj jars on nerves. But perhaps it is deliberately planned that way to portray the unnatural ‘loudness’ of that character.

Adi’s plot and direction, both leave much to desire. The cinematic concept of ‘suspension of disbelief’ seems to be stretched to the very limit as time and again we have to throw the logic out of the window to swallow what is being shown on the screen. The lack of novelty and originality is the most striking and surprising fact, especially when we consider that this talented film-maker is coming back to cinema after such a long hiatus. But instead of trying out something really new he just rehashes some old ideas. His presentation too seems pretty naïve and he fails to provide enough moments of intrigue and fun, which would have at least made it a great escapist entertainer.

The theme of transformation of one spouse into a flashy, attractive ‘other self’ to win over an uninterested partner is nothing new in Hind cinema. In 1959, V. Shantaram presented it in Navrang at a psychological level where a poet kept seeing a beautiful lady as his poetic inspiration, only to realize in the end that she was just his imagined glamorous mental image of his own simple house-wife. In a forgettable 70s film Pyar Ka Sapna Mala Sinha changed herself from a dumb village belle into a smart westernized lady to win over her hubby Biswajeet. RNBDJ just reverses the places of husband-and-wife in these plots!

So RNBDJ might have succeeded at the box-office as a blockbuster, entertainer- call it what you may but apart from Sharukh’s Suri-portrayal, it does not really present something new and in a film coming from Bollywood’s premier film-house and from such a celebrated film-maker- superstar team, the audience certainly deserved much more!