Dil Bole Hadippa! This was the first genuinely masala Bollywood movie to make its world debut at a North American film festival. It is a good pick since it has all of the attributes that make the type entertaining against cynics’ best judgement: it’s a straightforward, joyful display of colour, rhythm, and romance.
Rani Mukherjee plays Veera, a gender-bending cricket who disguises herself as a guy named Veer in addition to playing the sport she adores. Shahid Kapoor portrays Rohan, a diasporic Indian guy from London who returns to Punjab to save his separated father’s side inside the imaginary Aman Cup from such an eight-year losing record versus Pakistan.
The two characters fall in love, as the team prepares for the climax match, in a succession of charming, though conventional, storey elements. Mukherjee is endearing as both the teenage male cricketer and the feisty young lady who refuses to accept that sexism can derail her ambitions.
Despite the idea of a cooperative athletic event, the film is unabashedly patriotic, featuring a caricature of a cruel captain on the Pakistani side. It reifies the concept that all real desis must return to their motherland, as do many Bollywood films featuring alleged diasporic protagonists.
The village is shown as beautiful, devoid of hardship, but with a goodhearted, naïve cliché on every bullock waggon. Despite this, the Dil Bole Hadippa picture has a beguiling quality about that now. Maybe it’s the upbeat bhangra-inspired music or Mukherjee’s ridiculous cosmetics, that emerges mysteriously when she pulls her false beard. Nevertheless, there’s really romance in this movie, which one may attribute to the movie’s vaguely feminist undercurrent.
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