Movie Review: 5 Weddings
2.0/5
To revive the ratings of her fashion magazine and with the added incentive of becoming its new editor, US based fashion writer Shania Dhaliwal (Nargis Fakhri) lands an assignment covering Indian weddings -- or make that Punjabi weddings -- in India. The catch is that after getting estranged from her Indian father at the age of six and coming to the US with her American mother (Bo Derek), she sort of hates her native country. However, her editor persuades her to take the assignment and her mother gives her a package addressed to her former husband, so the business trip gets a personal flavour as well. Upon coming to India, she gets saddled with an escort in the form of a cop Harbhajan Singh (Rajkummar Rao) and a funny driver, Donald (Ravi Aneja). She attends five different ceremonies at five weddings and finds the hijras (eunuchs) everywhere she goes. She’s fascinated by the transgenders and wants to write an article on them as well, which isn’t liked by the authorities, who want to put a stop to it. She also finds herself falling in love with Harbhajan. How life resolves all her problems forms the crux of the story...NRIs getting in touch with their roots and finding themselves in the process was the staple of the ’90s and hence the film looks twenty years too late. Why is an escort assigned to a journalist? She isn’t going on a war zone but is attending weddings. The reason for her estrangement with her father isn’t explained at all. Why does she hesitate to meet him? Her assignment was covering weddings so why is our heroine so interested in transgenders? A google search would have told her what hijras are. In any which case, knowing what they are or writing about them poses no danger to India’s culture so why are the powers-to-be so secretive about them.
The film looks like a bright idea on paper but is a rather disjointed effort on execution. We neither get the madness of the Indian weddings nor does the heroine get an emotional closure vis-a-vis her father. It’s a wishy-washy affair which looks like an amateur video made on Punjabi weddings at best. The humour is derived mostly through poking fun at the Indian accent when it comes to speaking English and that’s akin to reducing India to a land of snake-charmers and magicians. Nargis Fakhri looks apt for her role and makes the most of the opportunity as the confused NRI trying to reconcile herself to the idea of a new India. Rajkummar Rao as a Punjabi cop is certainly a new deal and much could have been made out of it. His under-utilisation is clearly a case of opportunity lost. The actor gamely pulls on despite knowing he’s batting for a lost cause. The leads do share a certain camaraderie and it would be interesting to see Nargis and Rajkummar cast together in a better film...
