Film: Life Partner

Director: Rumi Jaffery

Cast: Govinda, Fardeen Khan, Tusshar Kapoor, Genelia D’Souza. Prachi Desai

Rating: **

Running at: Inox (Forum, City Centre, Swabhumi)

At one point of time in his career, Govinda Ahuja sported a pajama with the nara trailing him like a faithful puppy, dry-humped an assortment of heroines, frolicked around the great Indian countryside with a boxer-clad Shakti Kapoor for company (who made strange animal-like noises in regular intervals) and spewed politically incorrect statements at the expense of “modern women” and “city slickers”. We bought that. We laughed even. An indulgent, reckless laugh akin to the chuckle induced by the sight of a particularly obese person falling. Guilt was involved of course, but those were the days of political incorrectness. Which meant Govinda could get away with taming the shrew, making regionalistic and homophobic digs and assaulting sensibilities without raising an eyebrow.

A lifetime later, he will still go scot free with all that, as long as he keeps his drawstring in his pinstriped, well-tailored trouser. We are multiplex audience you see. Not that Life Partner is about Govinda dry humping women, thank god for that. But its idiom is derived from Govinda-David Dhawan flicks from the 1990s. So there are plenty of gags and addressed-to-audience situations (you know where Govinda is placed in the corner of the frame and spouts words of cowbelt wisdom). The main plot of the film involves two case studies — a love marriage that involves a dopey Fardeen Khan who goes all out to woo a shrieking-pouting abomination played by Genelia and an arranged one where a dictatorial father-in-law makes things a little too difficult for the young couple (Tusshar and Prachi). Govinda is a divorce lawyer who doesn’t believe in the concept of marriage (which means he gets to call women all kind of names and mouth shadi ka laddoo lines). Adjustmental problems arise and help is sought from the monster lawyer. God only knows why. Eventually, things are sorted out, blah blah blah blah…

... contd.