Film: Veere Di Wedding
Cast: Kareena Kapoor Khan, Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, Swara Bhaskar, Shikha Talsania, Sumeet Vyas, Manoj Pahwa
Director: Shashanka Ghosh
Rating: * * *
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Runtime: 125 mins
A marriage ceremony (and you guessed right- it’s a big fat Punjabi one) brings four friends together and ousts a load of skeletons from their closet. It’s about free-wheeling womanhood (obvious inspiration: Sex and the City) packaged as liberal feminism with a penchant for expletive-spewing and sex talk. The four friends, Kalindi (Kareena Kapoor Khan), Avni (Sonam Kapoor Ahuja), Sakshi (Swara Bhaskar), Meera (Shikha Talsania) deal with love, marriage and heartbreak in their own unique ways.
They are outspoken and outrageous in their efforts to crack open the status quo with their own ‘bindaas’ attitude. Kalindi is the one getting married to Rishabh (Sumeet Vyas), but according to her girlie confidences, finds it difficult to come to terms with marriage and it’s many challenges. The narrative tries to marry progressive thinking with cultural strictures and ends up laying it all out in fictitious and obviously simulated fashion.
The women here speak their minds in no-holds-barred mode. Sex, cuss words, orgasms and sex toys find frequent mention in their conversations with each other. And it’s not a sight to behold or uphold for that matter. Not that they shouldn’t or can’t do it but the fact that it sounds distastefully crass coming from the mouths of actresses who have hitherto specialised in going with the grain rather than against it and takes a lot of getting used to, is a problem. The roles are basically an image-busting platitude meant to give these actresses something different to do rather than challenging their craft. And the four actresses may have felt liberated essaying them. Unfortunately, the audience might not reciprocate in reflective fashion.
Kareena, Sonam, Swara and Shikha’s uninhibited exuberance and vitality are well defined-given the fact that they appear to have bonded well and manage to set the house on fire with their largely salacious antics. The ease and effortlessness with which they deliver their audacious lines allow the audience to sit back and take it all in their stride. The narrative has enough laugh-out-loud moments to be certified as entertaining. The loudly haranguing background score and intrusive musical serenades don’t allow for consistent engagement though.
The plush production values, contour shaping make-up and the fancy costuming shout loud about the abundant attempts to stun the senses. The lack of movement in the middle (overburdened with girl-talk) not-withstanding, there is a definitive light-heartedness to this heavy-duty rumination about marriage and after, life. This is not a path-breaking, intelligent, crafty or gutsy effort. It’s merely an entertaining one!
