Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji

Rating:**

With his latest,Madhur Bhandarkar has thrown a switch. Instead of making us squirm,he sets out to make us laugh. And succeeds,but only to an extent.

First off,‘Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji’ is not a rom com. It is a Bollywood-style bromance,where the crass buddy jokes are to be necessarily leavened by emotion. Three guys get together by happenstance,but what they do after they begin sharing bed and board,completely separately of course,has a striking similarity. Each wants a girl,and each gets one,or so he thinks. On-the-brink-of-divorce-bank-manager Naren ( Devgn) is entranced by fresh-young-intern June ( Padamsee). Casanova Abhay ( Hashmi) is content with loving and leaving ‘em,till he bumps into NRI do-gooder Nikki ( Haasan). And naïve,innocent Milind ( Vaidya) is convinced that Gungun ( Das) is the light of his life,even though she quite mercilessly uses him.

The trouble with ‘Dil Toh Bachcha Hai Ji’ is that the slim material gets stretched over two-and-a-half hours. Too much running time,and too little nuance flatten this enterprise. Milind is an Incurable Optimist. Abhay aka Abby is an Inveterate Flirt. Naren is a Besotted Fool. The girls also conform to types : a June Pinto will serve spicy Goan food cooked by her loving grandma,an on-the-make Gungun will be single-track in her ambition to become a heroine,today’s girl Nikki is as commitment phobic as the next guy. Oh,and because it’s a Bhandarkar film,we get a cameo of a flamingly gay person,with the mandatory fluttering eyelashes,and dangling wrists.

shubhragupta@expressindia.com