Kapil Sharma’s improvisational antics cannot rescue this dull-as-ditchwater rom-com from sinking without grace. A sprawling cast of potentially engaging actors struggle to find their bearings in a progressively unbearable plot about a Daadi who creates the impression that she is getting married when — spoiler alert — she is not!
Daadi Vimala Ahuja (Neetu Kapoor) just wants to get her children’s attention. Durga Khote, when abandoned by her children in ‘Bidaai’, was the portrait of poignancy. Neetu Kapoor looks too smug to be a martyr.
If her Vimala had only tried some other quicker trick, we would have been spared the ordeal of sitting through two-and-a-half hours of trainwreck writing and calamitous acting.
I’ve never seen so many inept performances in one film before. If there was ever an opposite of ‘Sholay’ in terms of ensemble excellence, this is it. Barring R Sarath Kumar, who miraculously manages to dignify his utterly absurd role, keeping calm even when everyone around behaves as if they have just discovered that all petrol pumps are going dry.
Neetu Kapoor as the grandmother who triggers a family hullabaloo seems to be enjoying a secret joke rather than responding to the scriptural stimuli that seems comfortable, making all its characters uncomfortable.
Why does Vimala go to such ludicrous lengths to get her family’s attention? And really, why can’t she have an actual boyfriend instead of faking one?
Funny, how ‘Daadi Ki Shaadi’ is not about Daadi’s shaadi, just as ‘Dostana’ was not about homosexuality. This is one of those highly annoying situational tragedies where the veneer of progressiveness is simply a smokescreen for silliness. Hard as it tries to take us the other way, we really can’t take Daadi’s sorrow seriously. She just doesn’t seem to warrant, or even want, our sympathy.
Her family is played by actors who act so hard they look like chorus players in a street play trying hard to be heard in the last row.
Riddhima Kapoor, who makes a fashionably late entry — in more ways than one — is beautiful but not cut out for cinema. Hopefully, this was a one-off indulgence and we are more than willing to grant her that.
Speaking of not being cut out for cinema, Kapil Sharma plays a goofy intellectually challenged version of Shah Rukh Khan in ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’.
Our cinema is so sold on tradition, it barely gives itself a chance to breathe any fresh air.
