Remake gone terribly wrong

Romantic Drama
DHADAK
CAST: Ishaan Khatter, Janhvi Kapoor, Ashutosh Rana
DIRECTION: Shashank Khaitan
1 and half stars

In the small town of Udaipur, India, a boy falls in love with a girl. Madhukar (Ishaan Khatter) is the only son of a family that run a modest eatery while Parthavi (Jan­hvi Kapoor) comes from a high caste Rajput family led by her patriarch father (Ashutosh Rana) with political ambitions. It’s easy to guess where the story goes from here. ‘Dhadak’ is pitched as the tradi­tional Romeo-Juliet love story where doomed lovers Madhukar and Par­thavi have to battle great odds to save their love. The only reason for a conventional ‘Dhadak’ to exist when off-beat small town romantic dramas like ‘Barielly ki Barfi’, ‘Dum Lagake Haisa’ and ‘Subh Mangal Savadhan’ are working their magic is that it’s a remake of the highly suc­cessful Marathi film ‘Sairat’, which is just two years old.

Unlike writer/director Nagraj Man­jule’s ‘Sairat’ that was made on a low budget of 4 crores and cast first time actors with no film industry connec­tions, ‘Dhadak’ is produced by Bol­lywood’s leading film studio Dharma Production, owned by Karan Johar, on a reported budget of 75 crores. And the film comes at a time when Bollywood’s A-list makers like Johar have been accused of favoring star kids over outsiders. ‘Dhadak’ too has been deemed as a launch pad for the late Bollywood diva Sridevi’s daughter (Janhvi Kapoor) and Sha­hid Kapoor’s younger step brother (Ishaan Khatter).

This needs to be highlighted to understand why the run-of-the-mill romantic plot felt refreshing in ‘Sairat’ and why it feels synthetic in ‘Dhadak’ even with big names and a mammoth budget. Nagraj Manjule, himself a dalit, crafted the original film’s caste conflict with devastating intimacy. The story might have been a tad clichéd but Manjule was able to engineer many tensed and heartfelt moments in the story that seam­lessly threaded together adolescent romance and vicious world of caste-based violence.

Shashank Khaitan, who directs the remake, gives us a sanitized world with lush production design and actors putting on fake Rajasthani accents. He’s reluctant to critique the Indian caste system and makes do with a parallel subplot of regional politics.

He paints the young Madhukar and Parthavi with such sketchy details that their romance seems like shallow puppy love, not something that has viewers fidgeting, praying for their budding love to survive the bone dry societal climate. Khaitan’s work is too breezy to evoke anything close to that feeling.

Much of the success of the orig­inal film has been credited to the majestic orchestra-driven musi­cal score and pulsating songs of composers Ajay-Atul. Their music has been reused in ‘Dhadak’ but Khaitan falters under the weight of his film’s grand visual look and frolicking touristy landscape that leave no space for the music to inject soul.

There’s nothing noteworthy in the young lead actors’ perfor­mances. Khatter is mawkish and impresses sparingly with his ever-ex­panding grin in the film’s lighter moments. He definitely shows range when the story shifts, as he easily grows broodier and less gooey-eyed. But his counterpart Janhvi Kapoor remains one note for most of the film. To look headstrong and bratty, Kapoor rigs up a stiff facial expression that doesn’t look one bit comfortable.

‘Dhadak’ is a flossy and less poetic version of ‘Sairat’. It gives no sign of cinematic ambition and looks like a quick cash grab marketing strategy of a big Indian film studio.