Dasvi

“Jailed under a tough cop, an uneducated politician decides to spend his time studying for high school, while his scheming wife has plans of her own.”

Dasvi’s logline — an industry term for story pitches that give you the gist of the film — is one of the finest to come from Bollywood. It encapsulates everything about the story in a sentence, without wasting screen-space on the film’s profile page at Netflix, where Dasvi is streaming.

Given that the film is made by the makers of Hindi Medium (Maddock films, producers of Mimi, Stree and Roohi), one expects a well thought-out, able-handed approach for the story.

Riding entirely on Abhishek Bachchan’s charisma and dexterity, Dasvi is an enjoyable homage to Hindi Medium. Though not as original or as hard-hitting as the latter, this is an enjoyable film that stays away from narrative pigeonholes.

Dasvi is a light-hearted family film without violence or villains while Badhaai Do is a rather long story of two LGBTQ people who understand each other’s predicament

Bachchan, playing the loveable, sensible and even sympathetic politician, has really matured as an actor. Gone are the physical and acting comparisons with dad Amitabh Bachchan, and the subconsciously flaunted expressions they genetically shared. Here we have an actor who can pull off diverse roles — pity though, because scripts and directors rarely push him to do so as much.

The screenplay by Ritesh Shah, Suresh Nair, Sandeep Layzell (based on the story by Ram Bajpai) is fairly cliché-free, yet still a predictable affair. One of the major drawbacks of this story — which is not even the story’s fault, mind you — is that one doesn’t easily sympathise with politicians as we do with the common man (ala Hindi Medium’s Irrfan Khan). The former’s struggles don’t hit as close to home, no matter how hard the story tries.

Still, there is much to love here. The meat and potatoes of Dasvi are its dastardly yet likable characters. After Bachchan, Nimrat Kaur is a hoot. The actress plays Bachchan’s simple, backward-minded, meek housewife who develops a taste for politics when he places her in his place as the Chief Minister of their state.

Yami Gautam, playing the tough cop transferred to the jail he ends up in, smirks a lot, but still manages to pull off her role. Dasvi is a light-hearted family film without violence or villains (at least, not in the way one expects), so I guess Gautam’s performance kind of gels with the overall vibe.

Streaming on Netflix, Dasvi, directed by Tushar Jalota, is rated suitable for ages 13+ according to the certification. However, the younger lot can watch it as well

Badhaai Do

Given the steep inclusive tilt of today’s Bollywood cinema, I suppose a film such as Badhaai Do was an eventuality. Touted as a spiritual successor to Badhaai Ho — I’m sure, the Do and Ho would confuse anyone at first glance — Badhaai Do is a story about a homosexual couple (a gay man and a lesbian woman) who agree to tie the knot in a sham marriage to fool their families and work circles. Needless to say, things become convoluted — though not as soon as you expect, and not as funnily either.

Badhaai Do is a rather long story of two people who understand each other’s predicament — and irrespective of whether one agrees with the story of the film, it’s not a bad way to spend two-and-a-half hours. A briskier pace, lesser run-time and more comedy of errors would have made the film far more entertaining.

Director Harshaverdhan Kulkarni is just about adept at handling the very deliberate, pseudo-realistic tonality of the screenplay (the film is written by Suman Adhikary, Akshat Ghildial and Kulkarni). What you see falls neither here nor there in terms of realism; it’s a Bollywood take on life that stops itself from going overboard.

More than the screenplay, the mood and purpose of the story (ie. the propagation and support of the LGBTQ+ community and, later, the issue of child adoption they face) banks entirely on the shoulders of the film’s lead pair, Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar.

The film couldn’t have been in better hands.

Pednekar, now a go-to female lead for films that raise socially relevant messages, is a good actress; Rao, however, is a phenomenon. The actor somehow finds the right emotional balance of the role without indulging in genre stereotypes (he plays a cop who loves bodybuilding and falls in love quite easily, however his physicality doesn’t exhibit the ‘sensitive’, effeminate cliche of gay men in media).

Badhaai Do is primarily about acceptance and equal rights. While the latter may yet still be a pipedream in India, with films slowly pushing for acceptance in the masses’ mindset, it may not be long when acceptance of sexuality and sexual orientation becomes a norm in the country.

In historic context, when this eventually comes to pass, you can applaud Badhaai Do for its effort. Until then, you can say that it was a mediocre film that never punched above its weight.

Streaming on Netflix, Badhaai Do is rated suitable for ages 13+, though I’d recommend the film for ages 18 and above. At times the film doesn’t really fit into the family-viewing model, especially in Ramazan

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 17th, 2022