Gori Tere Pyaar Mein review: Imran, Kareena build bridge but not love story

A few years ago, while working for PETA, a friend of mine took to the streets as an escort to a giant chicken. Once, she dressed up as a tiger. This is the sort of thing I expect people to do if they’re taking part in a play or the Carnavale in Rio de Janeiro, but either dressing up as an animal or accompanying said animal is not what I expected from someone who describes her job as ‘animal activist’. That, however, can’t match the absurdity of the gamut of activities that Kareena Kapoor takes part in as the “environmentalist” heroine of Punit Malhotra’s Gori Tere Pyaar Mein. Kapoor plays Dia, who does the following in the process of being an environmentalist: Leads and lectures at a morcha against corruption Protests land grabbing in urban areas Sets up an orphanage (almost) Works with AIDS patients Performs delivery of animal and human babies. Dia narrowly misses being a construction worker too, in her efforts to rebuild the nation somewhat literally one village at a time. And because this is a Bollywood romantic comedy, she also manages to dance at a few weddings, fall in love and reform a spoilt brat of a hero while maintaining a complexion to die for and the shine in her lustrous, perfectly dyed hair. Dia’s character is only marginally more incredible than Imran Khan’s. Khan plays Sriram Venkat, the most North Indian looking Tamilian in Bengaluru. He doesn’t look or sound anything like either a Tamilian or the rest of his family. The film tries to gloss over this discrepancy by making Sriram’s father joke that Sriram was swapped as a baby in hospital. Since Khan really is rather adorable, we’re willing to be a little indulgent, but later, when he ends up to be an architect who can design and build bridges, it becomes obvious that Gori Tere Pyaar Mein doesn’t want you to suspend disbelief as much as switch off your brain altogether. [caption id=“attachment_1244005” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: Facebook[/caption] Gori Tere Pyaar Mein is set in an India where every city’s airport looks like departure terminal of Mumbai’s domestic airport. It begins with bad boy Sriram getting engaged to Vasudha (Shraddha Kapoor), a good Tam-Brahm girl who, like all good Tam-Brahm girls, is an expert in Carnatic music. (When she’s getting married, she converts to Punjabi Bollywood, abandoning solid gold for polkhi and kanjeevaram for a chiffon sari with rhinestones on the border. She also wears mehendi, thus exemplifying an Aryan attack on Dravidian traditions.) Vasudha, however, doesn’t want to marry Sriram. She’s only agreeing to this marriage because — possibly since she’s a good Tam-Brahm girl — she can’t tell her parents she’s in love with a Sikh environmentalist named Kamaljit. While Kamaljit lurks around Vasudha and Sriram’s wedding festivities pretending to be a caterer and belting out Rabbi songs (badly), Vasudha gets Sriram to talk about his ex-girlfriend, Dia. At the end of the first half, Sriram hitches up his veshti and runs out of his own wedding. Lovers of buff torsos, look away at this point because Khan has the body of a regular, fit and unwaxed guy. After being bombarded by the impossibly-pumped and depilated bodies of Hrithik Roshan and Ranveer Singh, this reviewer was actually quite happy to see a normal male torso that isn’t made up of muscles that in motion look like IMAX 3D even though the film is 2D. However, Khan’s body is the only realistic element in the entire film, which makes it rather out of place. In the second half of Gori Tere Pyaar Mein, Sriram is clothed and determined to win back Dia, the gori in question. So he heads to a little village called Jhumli, near the Gujarat-Madhya Pradesh border, where she’s been living since they broke up a year ago. Here, armed with his sunglasses and terrible dialogue, Sriram longs for non-veg food and discovers purpose in his life while working alongside Dia. Diya’s work basically involves striding around the village, with or without a file in hand, and Sriram matches her stride for stride. Malhotra cast a number of competent actors as villagers but he gave them terribly-written roles. Anupam Kher plays a corrupt collector who isn’t allowed to be menacing because if he was actually evil, Sriram would have to do something more than grin and wear dark glasses to outwit him. Vineet Kumar Singh, who was last seen clutching morabba in Bombay Talkies, plays kabaddi in Gori Tere Pyaar Mein. It’s a tragic waste of a good actor. There can be no suspense about whether the film has a happy ending, but a few minutes after interval, I was bewildered about Dia and Sriram’s love story. All that was in evidence between the two of them was a hint of friendship. Sriram has more chemistry with the leggy Esha Gupta, who played Sriram’s one-night-stand/clubbing partner at the start of the film, than he does in the hours spent with Dia. In fact, there seemed to be more chance of a love story blossoming between Vasudha and Sriram. He certainly seems to share more with her than he does with Dia, who clearly cares far more about being ‘Mother India’ in Jhumli than she does for Sriram. Also, I was truly scared for the state of infrastructure in Gujarat when Kareena Kapoor started mixing cement to build a bridge singlehandedly. Repetitive and boring, Gori Tere Pyaar Mein manages the feat of making the audience completely lose interest in the couple at the heart of the film. The thoroughly forgettable songs don’t help the film’s cause. Before interval, Gori Tere Pyaar Mein is about falling out of love. After the interval, it’s about breathing in a bit of Gujarat and building a bridge. There are few moments of laughter and no love. Khan’s Sriram is a variation of the wannabe Jay Dhingra of I Hate Luv Storys. Just as Simran was meant to contrast Jay in Malhotra’s first film, so does Dia in this new one. She is supposed to be mature and idealistic, but what Malhotra has actually written is a character with a thoroughly ridiculous notion of charity and social service. It’s no surprise Khan and Kareena can do little more than look pretty in the film.