Dilwale Review

I found out that a theater near me would be showing Dilwale a day early! I went and waded through huge crowds of Star Wars fans dressed up in their Chewbacca pajamas to see it tonight! The theater showing Dilwale wasn't even a half full. I'm not sure people realized it would be showing today. And it was $20! I think SRK is taking a page from Baahubali and other Telugu movies that charge a premium.

I will try to be spoiler free. I enjoyed it, but I was not blown away. Let's just say it will not go down as my favorite SRK/Kajol film ever. The action parts were very good, the SRK/Kajol story line had meat to it, and they gave it their all. But it's very much a Rohit Shetty film. There were lots of comedy bits to the movie that just weren't funny to me. Lots of Johnny Lever and a young friend of Varun's. I don't think the Desi audience I saw it with found those parts hilarious either. And I like Boman Irani, but he and the other comedic actors felt like they were trying too hard or something. For those of us who've seen a lot of Bollywood films, there's one comedy scene in a cafe where the TV keeps changing channels with lines from old films that is very amusing.

Some parts of the SRK/Kajol storyline were very swoonworthy. Varun had great chemistry with SRK, but his female costar has no sparkle. She's no Kajol.

The very last line of the film did make me very happy.

I wonder if it's my expectations going in. I want the SRK/Kajol reunion to be directed by Aditya Chopra, not Rohit Shetty with flying cars every which way. It's like wanting Nora Ephron and getting Michael Bay.