Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana: Rao does a fine job

Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Kriti Kharbanda, Navni Parihar, Govind Namdev, Nayani Dixit

Rated: 6/10

Small town films, with small town characters and very small town quirks, depending on which State the film is coming out of, has given Bollywood some great moments recently and all of them mostly through Rajkummar Rao. He is engaging, humble and real in this one too though the message of dowry gets somewhat messed up in this romance drama which glides from Allahabad to Kanpur to Lucknow.

Rao has been doing some brilliant work in such films, with Newton being his show-stopper film thus far though his side role in Bareilly Ki Barfi dwarfed the hero with the simple realism he lends to the character he plays.

In this one, he is a seedha-saadha middle-class boy Satyender (Sattu to friends) who has been voluntarily put on the marriage market after getting the “sakari naukri” of a clerk in the Excise Department. Through the family’s efforts, and after all dowry demands have been sorted out without him being in the picture, he meets a girl for marriage and promptly falls in love with her. So does she and all would have been hunky-do(w)ry had she not cleared her PCS exam and run away on the night of her wedding, without telling the heart-broken Sattu.

From romance to heartbreak to a revenge drama, this one is seamless and cute in its own quirky way but in the run-up messes up the dowry message. The disclaimer at the beginning that the film does not seek to promote dowry falls flat on its face with the argument of acceptability being put forth rather casually by the boy’s mother — that she is demanding only that much from the bride’s family as she would need to pay up for her own daughter’s wedding! But the film is all about Rao who is clearly having fun. Kriti Kharbanda looks beautiful and all that but is just a prop to the film centring around Rao — and Nayani Dixit, who plays the kickass elder sister of Kriti.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, November 12, 2017