Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani

"Soch nahi, swad wahi", is a line said by Alia Bhatt's Rani within the movie and it's perfectly apt for this Karan Johar directorial. Rocky Randhawa and Rani Chatterjee fall in love while fearing their differences in culture, ideologies would clash, resulting in destroying their love. To fight for their love, the duo decide to exchange their respective families for 3 months where Rocky goes onto live with Rani's Bengali family while Rani moves in with Rocky's Punjabi family run by the Matriarch Dhanalakshmi Randhawa (Jaya Bachchan). How their love story survive despite the ideology clashes forms rest of the story.

I wasn't prepared enough for a progressive Karan Johar family entertainer. Having said that, KJo is in full form as he is not trying to ape any other director or even please the current generation. He reclaims his identity and plays to his strength. Karan Johar is meant to narrate rich people stories and add to that a love story + lots of family drama, you get the recipe for a KJo blockbuster ready. What this films lack is good songs which again is made up by the usage of old classics.

RARKPK is not without it's flaws but Karan Johar fills it with enough memorable scenes, heart touching ones, that I had to stop complaining about the lengthy runtime. Speaking of standout scenes, both first half and second half delivers them back to back. Alia shines whenever she gets to but it is Ranveer who owns the film while letting the veterans to take over their respective scenes. My only major complaint would be the Dhindora Baje song as Dola Re bit before that had already done the magic, also that bit was my paisa vasool moment.

Karan Johar truly upgrades his arsenal, while the standing upto the matriarch might be the major plot point, several other issues are highlighted sensibly and kudos to the team. Sure, the initial scenes are jerky, trying a bit too hard while introducing the two main leads but after that it's a smooth narrative. The ode to classic songs or to other films' famous lines including the one from K3G, Karan Johar has packed a solid entertainer.

Rocky Aur Rani is another addition to the gallery of Dharma films with cringe and wordy titles. Karan Johar is famous for making unapologetically formulaic potboilers with larger than life settings, unrealistic tropes, humour banking on audience's stereotypical and/or prejudiced mentality, scintillating chemistry, great soundtrack and score, extremely convenient resolutions and a buttload of melodrama. Rocky-Rani, however, does two things differently. It underwhelms on the music front and it ditches punchbag character-oriented humour for more progressive comedy.

The movie is filled with pop culture references, many of which were self-eulogising and relied on the feedback loop of celebrity culture whose torchbearer is Karan Johar himself. It also takes up certain plots that could potentially contradict each other and then dissolves them conveniently for the benefit of the main storyline that revolves around the lead pair. Half of the film's budget seems to have been spent on obtaining licenses to the many, many popular Bollywood numbers it used to set up the chemistry between its lead pair - something its average original soundtrack probably wouldn't have managed.

You walk into a Karan Johar film expecting all of this but where this film surprises is in its tonality. The movie feels like an Ayushmann Khurrana social comedy set in Karan Johar cinematic universe. You have a relatable, spoilt but receptive "raja beta" as the lead who falls in love with someone who transforms him into a progressive man. The main conflict then revolves around this man transforming the rest the regressive characters into doing better and the resolution is always acceptance and togetherness. Of course all of this involves extremely wealthy characters whose jobs turn demanding and non-demanding as per the plot's need. You even have a monologue or two by the leading man but Karan is calculative enough to know how much he should challenge this post-pandemic cinemagoing audience so he villainises the woman by making her impulsive at one point. He also chooses to dedicate one monologue to victimisation of the leading man who has been trying to change but the cancel culture would simply not let him catch a break!!! It almost felt like Karan was directly talking to those in the audience who have cancelled him for problematic tropes in his past films.

The film almost tips in the favour of the Bengalis in this ultra rich person's Vicky Donor but tries to add nuance to show it's not biased against Punjabis or views all Bengalis as progressive. You have good and bad on both sides. Its resolution positively surprises when it holds back from going completely Disney on you. It acknowledges incorrigibility in some people while also discussing (in its contrived Johari manner) the root cause behind it.

The performances deserve a special mention. You have incredible supporting cast from Jaya Bacchan to Shabana Azmi to Dharmendra. The leading pair too did well - specially Alia whose ethereal beauty and captivating screen presence was a character in itself.

Overall, the film makes for a fantastic one-time watch that stays with you for a couple of hours after viewing. You can watch it with your friends and family.

Through this film Karan Johar tries to teach his audience to be more progressive and let go of stupid old traditions because they were not right in the first place and have not improved our lives in any way. It's good to talk about all these things, I just wish Karan Johar himself followed what he has preached in the film, because looking at the title of the film, it seems Karan still believes that changing the spelling of a name will actually make his film a success.

WHAT'S GOOD :

1. Ranveer Singh was easily the best part of this film. His flamboyant portrayal of Rocky Randhawa was extremely entertaining to watch and the movie would have benefitted a lot if he was the main focus of the film. Not for a moment does it feel like Ranveer is forcing himself to act and also he never feels out of character. Once again Ranveer proves how good of an actor he is and it goes without saying that he is an absolute joy to watch on screen.

2. Every scene involving Dharmendra was truly worth watching. The veteran actor has a charming screen presence and even at this age can act better than most of his co-actors. The emotional impact of the dialogues delivered by Dharmendra was more than any other actor in the film; I just wish he had more scenes in the film.

3. Tota Roy Chowdhury's performance was easily the best among the supporting actors of the film. The scene where he reveals his story to Rocky was extremely heartwarming to watch and of course his dancing was phenomenal throughout the film. Aamir Bashir is an extremely underrated and unfortunately a very underutilized talent of our film industry; be it 'Inside Edge', 'School of Lies' and now this, he always delivers a top quality performance but for some mysterious reason remains under the radar. Jaya Bachchan as the evil mother reminded me of Amitabh Bachchan in [url=tt0213890] with some added goofiness. I didn't like her character at all, which only means that she played her role quite convincingly.

WHAT'S NOT GOOD :

1. The movie just goes on forever, as if it's on a mission to bore it's viewer to death before coming to an end. When the trailer itself has informed the viewers about it's central conflict, then why does the movie waste an hour to get there? Also, after the houses are interchanged, the movie just turns into a television show, with no real intention of reaching anywhere. There is absolutely no way this movie should have had a runtime of three hours; a ninety minute runtime was more than enough.

2. Karan Johar's films are known for their music but unfortunately this one has forgettable songs. A number of songs have been thrown into the mix, but by the time you are done watching the film, you don't remember any of them. Pritam has been delivering some beautiful songs of late, but it seems even he wasn't inspired to create some gems for this dull and boring story. Every single song of the film should have been rejected at the editing table.

3. The movie starts off nicely with some genuinely entertaining scenes thanks to Ranveer Singh's flamboyant portrayal of Rocky Randhawa, but soon turns into a lecture of morals and code of conduct with non-stop lessons being forced upon you in every single scene. Now it's a good thing to talk about social evils, but it has to be done in an organic manner and it definitely should not be the whole point of the film. Also, the movie gets carried away so much in some scenes while lecturing that it just becomes absolutely nonsensical. What was the whole point of that 'bra' shop scene? Was it really necessary for Ranveer to wear a bra to understand the point? Normally, people are hesitant in talking about their undergarments, they are not ashamed of it. That scene went unnecessarily over the top. Also, how is it wrong if someone is shy to talk about undergarments? That whole sequence felt like a case of feminism gone wrong.

4. The whole movie has the feel of an Ekta Kapoor soap opera, something that we stopped watching a long time back. Rich people dressed up all the time as if they are about to go for a wedding; mind games being played between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law; even the background music reminded me of the music that played during the Ekta Kapoor produced television shows.

5. The movie tells the story of two families, one of them being conservative while the other one being liberal and progressive. Now, it's completely fine for people to have different beliefs but to show one family as regressive while the other one as progressive is stretching it a bit too much. Life needs balance in order to function properly, you need to be progressive as well as a conservative; it makes no sense to declare one way of life as wrong because both of them have their downsides. Extreme form of anything will only lead you towards the realm of absurdity, where nothing good can ever exist, so it's always best to maintain a good balance in life as it allows us to take the most logical and sensible decisions in life.

6. Alia Bhatt wasn't a good choice for this role. Of late it has become common to push Alia Bhatt's name for every big project, regardless of whether she is suitable for it or not and this of course being a Karan Johar directorial, he was obviously going to take her considering the amount of love that he has for her; but unfortunately he took a wrong decision. From the very first scene, an attempt was made to portray Alia Bhatt's character as a very sexy woman, who wears sarees and has a voice of her own, but the director failed to do so convincingly, simply because Alia Bhatt wasn't fit for this role. Alia Bhatt's baby face and her voice completely takes you out of the kind of scene that the director was trying to showcase. This role required someone like an Aishwarya Rai or Kareena Kapoor or Kiara Advani. Even her acting felt forced on a number of occasions; she just wasn't cut out for this role.

7. I was hoping to find some comedy in the film, but apart from the "Big Boss" joke I didn't find anything to be particularly funny. Regardless of how we see 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' and 'Kal Ho Na Ho' today, one can't deny that they had a lot of humour.

I had high expectations from this one after all the praise it received from the critics, but I guess it was naïve of me to trust the judgement of critics in the first place. 'Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani' is a long and boring lecture that just doesn't know that it needs to conclude things as well.

The clichés, ensemble cast, album, massive dancers, grande settings, colors, and all the filmy things UFF!

Fun yet still powerful dialogues, telling important messages without sounding "preachy".

What makes me happier is the cameos; Sriti Jha (one of the reasons why I went for the first day first show then), Bharti Singh, Arjun Bijlani, Harsh Limbachiya, Arjit Taneja, and Shraddha Arya.

Minus one; Dharmendraji and Shabanaji's characters had romantic scene in front of Dhanlaxmi (Jaya ji's character) was uncomfortable to watch (for me), remembered that Kanwal and Dhanlaxmi are legally married and Jamini was "only" Kanwal's long lost lover. The moment was helped and distracted by Abhi Na Jao Chodkar song.

No story, same rehashed songs, dumb and shallow writing. Did not enjoy this movie at all.

This movie is everything Indian cinema needs to move away from. I really suggest karan produce movies from upcoming directors to understand how the industry needs to move on and grow.

For Ranveer, bro you need to say no to these roles. You are selling yourself short. You have immense talent and the goofy characters you've done so far need to end.

Overall the movie was an attempt to try and make the same thing again which Karan has been doing lately. Please give us better stories and writing, look around, the industry has grown a lot.