an ordinary government clerk. She's a young, bubbly girl. They get married because of a twist of fate. The girl says she can never love him. But, he's madly in love with her and sets out on a mission to woo her. That, in a nutshell, is the story of Aditya Chopra's “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi”. The problem is he takes all of three hours to tell you this, when the end is blatantly obvious in the first 10 minutes. Along the way, the audience is subjected to meaningless songs, fight sequences with sumo wrestlers, lots of corny dialogue and references to past Yash Raj films. To woo Taani, played by newcomer Anushka Sharma, protagonist Surinder Sahni (Shah Rukh Khan) gets himself a makeover, turning into a fast-talking, flashily dressed obnoxious character called Raj (Yash Raj seems to have a patent on this name). Raj partners Taani in a dance competition that she is keen on winning, without letting on that he is her plain, boring husband. The film is a romance, one that attempts to show that an ordinary man can love extraordinarily. It succeeds in parts, especially in the beginning and the end, but falters in the middle, mainly due to an awry screenplay and corny dialogues, aided in no less measure by some indiscriminate hamming by Shah Rukh Khan as Raj. He is far more endearing as the simpleton husband, bringing little nuances to his character that make you instantly sympathise with him. Anushka Sharma brings a freshness to her character that makes her eminently likeable. Vinay Pathak as Surinder's friend Bobby Khosla is a bit over-the-top, but then that's how his character is supposed to be. At the end, what you get is an average film that has some better-than-average moments. Coming from a director who made India's most loved film “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” and made us wait for a good eight years since his last project, this is a disappointing watch.
