As you may already know, Indian movies may come across to westerners as, practically, musicals. The music in this film is not bad, and there’s a bonus music vid as the film starts, but don’t be too irritated by the seemingly sudden outbursts of musical fantasy. It’s natural to this genre of film.
“It’s The Wedding Date—Bollywood style.”
The Rundown
Behind the name: Direct Translation—For Your Sake
Country: India, 2006
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Film Industry: Bollywood (2006)
Director: Dharmesh Darsha
Cast: Priyanka Chopra (Anu), Akshaye Khanna (Aman), Ameesha Patel (Shirani), Sunil Shetty (Kunal), Dino Morea (Danny), Anupam Kher (Arjun)
Compare to: The Wedding Date
Hate it or Love it? For what it’s worth, love it.
Synopsis in a Sentence: A woman hires a co-worker as an escort to her sisters wedding to make her ex-boyfriend in England jealous, and as you can guess, it doesn’t work and she ends up falling for her escort instead.
It begins with a music video that trademarks its Indian roots. There are fans, flying hair, dancing, and good music. The problem is, the video may give away the end of the story, but you’ll forget that by the time you get into the whole 2 hours and 7 minutes of this movie.
On Writing: The Plot
Welcome to the wonderful lives of rich Indian families with access to mansions in London and Lokhandwala and New York. Here’s the story: the lead character, Anu is a London-based non-resident Indian, living in India, she has to attend her sister’s wedding in England, and then “the Wedding Date” happens. The entire story is actually the Indian version of it. So there’s a little bit of re-writing, and a nice twist at the end, (not to forget the signature Hindi musical scores infused into all the drama). It’s good writing, with laugh-out-loud moments that may be memorable ones also. The individual characters infuse the Indian background to the story, and we learn a lot more about social backgrounds in modern day India through Aap Ki Khatir.
(3/5)
On Acting: The Cast
Not bad. The lead character carried the movie quite well. The main cast meshed easily, there was chemistry between the couples. It’s a fun cast, a good one, through which comedy was infused through (a shout out to Kunal’s aunts from New York). Of noteworthy mention is Sunil Shetty’s humble attempt at portraying romance, as he is otherwise known for his performance in action productions (we commend his courage to try something new, but truth is, he's great at playing staple character: he looked completely out of place in this film). It’s important to note one disappointment though; the so-called boyfriend from England, who Anu tries to impress (Danny) was quite disappointing. Otherwise, all was well.
Akshaye Khanna, who played Aman Mehra, (aka fake boyfriend) easily merged comedy with romance and drama. The lead character, Anu Kher, played by Priyanka Chopra (Miss. World 2000) also relayed the comedy and drama quite well.
Anupam Kher, who played Anu’s father, highlighted comedy in the film, while Ameesha Patel (Anu’s sister) highlighted the tragedy. Put together, the characters of Aap Ki Khatir and its cast were quite good.
(3.5/5)
On Wardrobe: The Fashion
Not bad, but nothing in particular of noteworthy mention. The styling of a few western-style pieces was laughable, while the Indian garb was enviable. Put together, nothing stood out as remarkably fantastic.
(3/5)
On Resolution: The Conclusion
There’s a pattern to Indian cinema, be it adventure or comedy, tragedy or action—If there’s a romantic story to the plot, there’s always a twist just as the couple is about to get cosy, and true to Indian cinematic writing, this pattern occurred in this movie. That said, everything was resolved, and without giving the finale away, it ended in a manner that was too-good-to-be-true, but what are movies for? The point of entertainment is to be entertained, and if that includes a happy feeling when the story ends, Aap Ki Khatir did just that.
(3.5/5)
The Verdict: A fun watch. Light-hearted comedy with a stab of tragedy and then it’s all happy-go-lucky again.
Overall Score = 13/20
Watch Aap Ki Khatir [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n-JjNUB7WA]
*Note: All web sources provided from this source are legal.
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