The best part about this Punit Malhotra film is that it doesn’t sermonize or promise to leave a thought-provoking message in some intellectual corner of your mind.
The best part about this Punit Malhotra film is that it doesn’t sermonize or promise to leave a thought-provoking message in some intellectual corner of your mind. It’s unabashedly impractical which surprisingly makes it quite entertaining. It’s a potpourri of funny moments, romantic scenes, a bit of emotional tadka garnished with a youthful flavour. If GTPM was a human, I would describe it as supremely carefree and happy-go-lucky.
Imran Khan’s abysmal acting made me shriek and creak, and his emotionless baritone gives you the same feeling of discomfort one experiences, when someone screeches the blackboard with the finger nails. But thank God all this was overshadowed by Bebo’s resplendent face, her Punjabi style ‘shake that tooh’ dancing and the same Geet-ish effervescence.
Sriram (Imran Khan) is an Architect who has enough money to not care a hoot about the moolah his family has spent on his education, and waste his life away partying, making merry with any sexy chick he spots while roving his eyes with great pleasure. Kareena Kapoor (Dia) is a hot-blooded social worker, who spends days fasting against corruption, conducting morchas, staying in the village but still look as fresh and fabulous as a daisy.
So the paths of these two diametrically opposite beings cross when one day Kareena spots her chick friend in a car with her boyfriend, and the bf here is Imran Khan. After the sweet pleasantries and formal introductions, Dia grabs Sriram’s jacket to stuff it under her tummy and pretend that she’s pregnant. She drags poor Imran and asks him to play her husband – all a part of her plan of clearing the traffic. She asks the cop to do something about the bottleneck as her water just broke. Traffic gets cleared, prank has been played, the two have become friends; since then Immu seems to be smitten by this lady even though he calls her the NGO, ghaas-poos eating, Shabana Azmi type and is tired of her ‘mere adarsh mere vasool’ kinda attitude. The story takes a twist when Sriram and Dia part ways after dating each other for a while, after which trails behind an interesting second half which is all about Imran wanting to get back to his ladylove, even if it means staying in a village filled with ‘gobar and gandagi’.
While some dialogues give you the hysterical giggles, there are also sequences I wish I could have avoided like one of those ‘smoking is injurious to your health’ ads. There’s this one scene in which a posse of villagers, after discovering that Dia affectionately calls Sriram as Sridevi, start singing ‘hawa hawai’ mockingly. There are jokes in the film which have the right punches at the right time.
A part where Imran gets all emotional when he loses his pet (which happens to be a crab) is just not convincing. If he was in some drama class, as a grade he would have definitely got a gorgeously big ‘F’.
After all’s said and done, I would stick to what I said in the start, that GTPM is a nice, feel-good film. There is a flavour of pleasant Bollywood style hogwash amidst the impracticalities and glitches. It’s a film you would want to watch over one of those ‘I don’t wana think, just want to de-stress’ kind of a weekend.
