Mere Brother ki Dulhan: Of Stock Footages, Caricatures and Déjà Vu

Time generally stops when the projector goes on. Sometimes it stops for the better, sometimes for the worse. Mere Brother ki Dulhan falls in the latter category. At 145 minutes, it was not supposed to be a tiresome effort to watch; it is... Believe me, it is!

Legend has it that during Mithun da’s heyday in 1990’s, he used to make 35-37 movies in a year and didn’t mind using some footage from one of his movies as a stock for other movies. Yash Raj Films (YRF) doesn’t make 37 films in a year (Thankfully!) but I get a feeling that they are using the same ploy.  Every character and sequence in MBKD gives you a feeling of déjà vu. 

Kush Agnihotri (Imran) saunters into the movie as if it were ‘I hate luv storys - part 2’. Same characterization, same limited set of expressions, same eyebrows (eyebushes, actually).. even his profession remains the same! Imran better invoke some divine (read: uncle) intervention before he gets typecast as a Jay or a Kush.

Dimple Dixit (Katrina) is like a daily-wager in this movie. I think she must have sauntered out of her vanity van every day and the director, Ali Abbas Zafar, must have told her “Okay, you will be a hippie rockstar today”, “You will be a demure prospective bride serving some tea today”, “You are gonna be drunk today” etc etc.. The thing is there is absolutely no continuity in her character... She looks and acts like a confused mix of Jab We Met’s Geet, Band Baaja Baaraat’s Shruti and Love Aaj Kal’s Meera.. Her mood, expressions and personality changes as often and as inconsistently as her earrings... okay, I might not be right about her expressions; they pretty much remain the same..

Luv Agnihotri (Ali Zafar) is a pretty face but that prettiness goes unnoticed in comparison to the ethereal beauty of Katrina. I have, unfortunately, not seen ‘Tere Bin Laden’ but, from what I’ve heard, it must have been a much much better effort than MBKD’s Luv.  

Every other supporting cast in this movie is a caricature. Kush’s friends remind me of the fantastic Deepak Dobriyal’s Pappi of ‘Tanu weds Manu’ (unfortunately, they are nowhere as great as Deepak). Kanwaljeet and Parikshit Sahani as Dimple and Kush’s respective dads start off well but then settle into their respective caricature molds. Even the wedding decorator/contractor looks straight out of ‘Band Baaja Baaraat’.

Like all YRF projects, MBKD boast of sound production quality and the works. But everything goes down the drain as soon the script and the story (or the lack of it) is talked about. There are so many pot-holes in the plot that they remind me of an average Indian road after monsoon. For eg: Where was the family when Kush takes Dimple on a 24 hour Dilli-darshan just two days before her engagement? How come no one notices that Dimple and Kush had run away from the Delhi farmhouse? Would Kush have still thought about Luv’s well-being and love interest, had he not fallen for Dimple? Parikshit Sahani is a retired colonel and Kanwaljeet is an IFS officer, so who the hell is paying for the extravagant Delhi farmhouse and the convenient shift to Agra at the drop of a hat? Let me guess, Yash uncle?... 

Oh by the way, did I mention that Ali Abbas Zafar worked as an assistant director in ‘Tashan’, ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ and ‘Badmash Company’? I guess that answers most of my questions stated above.

I can go and on about what is wrong with MBKD but I fear that my review will end up looking longer than this film’s script. In the end, I can only feel sad that the flicker of hope that YRF showed in ‘Band Baaja Baaraat’ has been mercilessly extinguished by MBKD.