Dil Kabaddi

Watched the movie with very low expectations and the plot is about ultra-modern dinky urban marital crisis and its not too bad for an one- time DVD watch.

With names like Irfan Khan, Konkana Sen, Rahul Bose - the tag "powerhouse of performance" becomes synonymous and hence there is hardly any flaw in their performances (Ifran pays homage to Govinda though!). Soha could have been better as "perpetual dissatisfied" lady. And yes, Rahul Khanna needs to do his homework. Payal Rohatgi was convincing as a "bimbo". Only time will tell the standing of Saba Azad.

The abstract narrative is innovative and interesting. Songs are passable.

Rahul Bose was very smug on "Coffee with Karan" about trashing his movies. When it comes to bad cinema, he is an integral part. Konkana is just a prodigal daughter of an influential mother with more aspirations than talent. What disappointed me was the performance of Irfan. He deserves better than this crap serves him. Soha Ali, although another prodigal daughter, displays much more promise. This sad attempt at parallel cinema with brazen display of plagiarism, only goes on the prove that a bad director can undo any classic script. Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives" not only provides script for the movie, narration is a verbatim copy too. Look for Irfan making a fool of himself towards end by trying to pull a Govinda.

Till sometime back, the three-letter word, sex, was considered taboo on the Hindi screen. But it's out of the closet now. Dil Kabaddi goes a step further it takes you inside the bedroom of two couples and makes you listen to the bedroom chat that they indulge in, bringing the sex lives out in the open.It tries to explore fields like sexual needs and fantasies in marriage but the movie ends up showing nothing but confused relationships .

Dil Kabaddi is a humorous and exaggerated take on the dynamics of the relationships between married couples, without being judgemental. It reveals the internal dilemma of the characters as they struggle to maintain or easily let go of their marriages, to fulfill their deeper desires.

Rahul Bose and Irrfan Khan have done challenging roles and same for the actresses Soha Ali Khan and Konkona. The film has been made keeping multiplex viewers in mind but it is not for kids and families. Even all multiplex viewers won't go for the kind of confusion concept.

The question is not whether Indian audiences are ready for a theme like this. The question is, does the script hold your attention for the next 2 hours? Sadly, it doesn't!

Movies on marital issues and post marriage relationships have been made earlier too but this is an altogether different movie which is not interested in entertaining you with some good humor or some realistic sequences. But instead the director is more interested in being extensively vulgar verbally than visually. The movie moves around some confused characters who are not happy with their spouses and find other ways to satisfy themselves emotionally and physically. Loosely based on Woody Allen's "Husbands & Wives", it shows an inside view of different bedrooms and their not so amusing stories with everything about the "3 letter word" wide open as never before.

Chek out at : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104466/

Debutante director Anil, sadly is not able to hold the audiences neither with his bold subject nor with its cheap dialogues at various places. In fact I should mention here that the viewer would be shocked to hear some strong & bold words coming from a 20 something girl and that too in quite disgraceful details. Just imagine a young girl talking with her professor about her recently broken relationship. And the reason she gives for the break up is that "she couldn't do it with his boyfriend due to his size". Was the director trying to make a huge breakthrough in Indian Cinema with such liberty taken or it was only for adding a shock value to the movie. The comment was quite innovatively written by the writer for a young college going girl. And that clearly showed the real intentions.

Regarding the star cast, everyone has done a good job, but once again the talented star cast is not provided with enough good scenes. There are entertaining moments but they come after long gaps. Out of all the actors the most impressive is Saba, a new comer who plays a film student to Rahul Bose and shares her private experiences with him openly. The scene where she is talking about her sexual experiences and her birthday sequence where she boldly asks Rahul for a birthday kiss are not only shocking but they are also capable of generating an awful influence over the youngsters.

Rahul Bose as a confused professor and Konkona Sen Sharma as his wife are fine. Rahul Khanna returns after a long time with an entertaining performance. Payal Rohtagi as a mindless beauty looks sexy and inviting. But out of the ladies, the best act comes from Soha Ali Khan. She is again impressive after "Mumbai Meri Jaan". And the main person, Irrfan Khan, as always is top rate. Though he is being given similar kind of roles by our film-makers but he is surely an actor to be proud of. He is the only person providing the comedy and comic element to the movie. As a sex crazy person he is too good and his bedroom sequence with his office colleague is the best sequence of the movie.

In spite of having Irrfan Khan and other well known names, the film is not able to hold you or impress the viewer with its content. It is neither a thoughtful social movie nor a good sex comedy. In fact in order to provide some fresh scenes the writer goes overboard and becomes vulgar. Especially the dialogues given to Saba, the young girl are quite debatable. If the Censors don't find these as vulgar then they must be having a very enlightening guidelines of censorship in their hands or maybe they are more strict with only visual and abusive words.

After seeing "Dil Kabaddi", I was forced to think that there is a very thin line between a good sex or adult comedy and a vulgar film. Often our directors start off with the first and end up being the second. Same is the case with "Dil Kabaddi".

Dil Kabaddi is another "event" that fills the heart with joy. Just to see story-tellers (and not just star kids and diamond merchants) get a chance to create real cinema in Bollywood is so heartening. We loved this movie and so did the half-empty PVR audience, median age 35, if the constant eruptions of gleeful laughter are any indication.

Unlike many good attempts, Dil Kabaddi does not falter in the second half simply because the director had a POINT to make. Maybe he has Woody Allen to thank for it, but this did not become a montage of slick shots against Mumbai's backdrop. All the humor and all the "slice of life" shots told a story. This is where the movie truly scores.

The other reason for its success, of course, is the excellent casting and performance. Each character was well-etched, including the "almost correct" English grammar and "avant garde" dress sense of Samit. His pairing with an intellectual, stylish, smart Mita is not that surprising in today's aspirational India-- a lot of successful women are truly happy with a less successful husband. I also liked the minor characters of ex-boyfriend, office hunk and Chirag the lech neighbor. Their body language and motivations reveal a well-written character as part of the screenplay. Something so rare even in mainstream Bollywood cinema. Ditto for the sex-jokes; they were much more tasteful than what is dished out in family-comedy "U" rated movies every week. That said, the "Kaaya" character could have been better etched.

Perhaps the movie targets a very specific audience, the mid-30s Indian, that grew up on Karan Johar's bubble-gum romance in the 90s and are "happily" married for 4-7 years now, like the characters in the movie. It is possible that this crowd will laugh the loudest, while those older and younger may find less to identify with in this story. They may yet discover it on DVD a few years later and laugh hearty. At its core, it is a story about our quest for love and our failure to recognize it when it happens. A tale of finding love versus our 'fantasy' of love.

While some have panned the movie for it's shameless copy of Husbands and Wives by Woody Allen, others have cringed at the barrage of sexual jokes and innuendo. In my opinion, it works where Mixed Doubles (the previous multiplex outing about infidelity) failed simply because it does not hold back or have any intellectual pretense. The movie keeps you laughing almost the entire time and yet makes an honest observation about modern Indian marriages.

The fact that it holds true for India 16 years after Woody Allen's 1992 original is a telling comment on Indian society playing catch-up with the west. For better or for worse...