Review | 'Shiddat' is a reminder of all that's wrong with the portrayal of romance in Hindi cinema

Radhika Madan and Sunny Kaushal in 'Shiddat' on Disney+Hotstar.

Releasing directly on Disney+Hotstar, Shiddat tries to convince you that women fall for men who woo them with a single-mindedness that’s no better than stalking.

It’s all Shah Rukh Khan’s fault, of course. He made romancing a woman practically impossible for any ‘newcomer’ in the industry. Whether it is ‘Sooraj hua maddham’ or ‘Main yahan hoon, yahaan hoon'.

It’s also Farah Khan’s fault. Had she not allowed Mayur Puri to write that dialogue for the king of romance in Om Shanti Om, we would have been spared 146-minute story based on that one word from that one dialogue. But it’s mainly Shah Rukh’s fault for saying the dialogue like he was saying it for millions of his fans.

The writer of this film obviously thinks lifting a line from the film is okay because they mention it in Shiddat. I wish they’d stop doing that. Stars don’t really align themselves to make a match happen because some man wishes hard for it! Whatever happened to the ‘Ram milayi jodi’ trope that has worked for Bollywood for years?!

It’s also Aditya Chopra’s fault for making DDLJ! It makes every imbecile think that it’s okay to gatecrash a girl’s wedding. Poor Radhika Madan who plays Kartika in this film is horrified that a man she has met at a sports meet (and had a one night stand with) is really showing up for her wedding. ‘Kaun karta hai aisa’ (who does this)? she asks. And even though she’s confused by his persistence, and begins to equate that with love, I was saying the same thing but added a word to her question: Seriously? Who does that?!

Persistence has of course been rewarded in Hindi cinema scripts to varying degrees in the past. In DDLJ, we saw Shah Rukh land up in Punjab and try to win over the girl's family (including a very strict dad played by Amrish Puri). But there the girl liked him already.

Raanjhna was a very sweet story, but not for the girl!

There are any number of films that fall somewhere in-between.

And newbies in the business seem like they’ve downloaded the Shah Rukh app (I am convinced that there must be one because the new lads come across as his understudy) and imbibed SRK Charm School modules 1-18.

Sunny Kaushal as Jaggi is a mix of the playful Raj from DDLJ and Rahul with swag from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The role may be written that way but imitation gets a little tiresome after a while. And Radhika Madan - who they’re ogling at who at first gets irritated and then gets chummy with Jaggi - gives practically the same speech about love and marriage as she did in the short film (Save The Da(y)te) which is part of the Feels Like Ishq series on Netflix. And Sunny Kaushal offers her a superb option: Who wants to marry? Let’s have a grand affair instead.

You groan at this kind of writing and wonder which la-la land do these guys inhabit. Shouldn’t someone know better? Sunny Kaushal comes to the big screen with a lot of baggage. He is the younger brother of the talented Vicky Kaushal, and comparisons will be natural. While Vicky Kaushal aces the silences, Sunny Kaushal is made to talk, and talk, and talk some more. He has to, because he just left home (dude, why burn your passport? Leave it at home!) and joined a band of illegal immigrants who travel through Europe to get to London, in a shipping container! The whole idea is so ridiculous, you want to call immigration services yourself and have him deported!

Why did they not think of a simpler, more plausible story? Jaggi comes back home to the land of sarson ke khet (mustard fields) and tells everyone in the happy-happy joy-joy village about this ‘jalpari’ he fell in love with, and the whole village then collects money with all the Shiddat in the world and finds him a ticket to get to London. Throw in a couple of bhangra and dhol numbers and a mother who cries into her phulkari dupatta before she sees her beta go to London to bring back a gori-chitti bahu…

With Devon Ke Dev Mahadev aka Mohit Raina playing the poor embassy official who has to deport this man who talks and talks and talks is a study in godly patience. His story with Diana Penty as his wife is way more interesting. But he has to deal with this annoying illegal immigrant! I am sure he looks nonplussed in some scenes simply because he gets to say things like: the other side of this sea is Dover and then London, which makes the love-crazed lad jump into the English Channel to swim. That’s right! The writers of this film got a hockey player to swim. And that too, the English Channel!

But the stupidity doesn’t end there. Remember I told you he channeled his inner Shah Rukh? Imagine the Shah Rukh pose: falling backwards with a smile on his face. And now see Jaggi do just that because the writers do not realise that things which freeze at 33,000 feet in the sky do not unfurl. Sigh. If the makers had used a little more Shiddat while doing their job, Sunny Kaushal would have had a better vehicle to launch his film career.