Planet Bollywood
Dil Vil Pyar Vyar
 
Producer: Metalight Productions and Insight Productions
Director: Anant Mahadevan
Starring: R. Madhavan, Namrata Shirodkar, Sanjay Suri, Sonali Kulkarni, Jimmy Shergill, Hrishitaa Bhatt, Rakesh Bapat, Bhavna Pani, Kiran Kumar, Riya Sen
Music: R.D. Burman Re-Created by Bablu Chakraborty
Lyrics: Majrooh, Anand Bakshi, Rajinder Krishan, Gulzar
Genre: Romantic
Recommended Audience: General
Film Released on: 18 October 2002
Reviewed by: Rakesh Budhu  - Rating: 7.0 / 10
 
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Music Review
Public Rating Average: 5.1 / 10 (rated by 411 viewers)
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A fourteen-song affair could be classified as nothing else but a musical. Dil Vil Pyar Vyar serves to place on a pedestal the beauty of R.D. Burman’s music with of course, the twist courtesy of maestro

Bablu Chakraborty. And, as promised it allows the audience to revel in the greatness of them all. But since every song does tell a tale, there are the tales that go with them, hence four couples.

The terms fresh and innovative, despite its unachieved, can still be used to describe Dil Vil Pyar Vyar although the couple with the ‘dil’ has the most heart than the ‘vil’, and that with the ‘pyar’ has much more than the ‘vyar’. Thus there is nothing extraordinaire in the way these romances are put together, and though they do climax together in one grand finale, the cohesion between the four main stories is what is missing in the bouquet of melody and inventiveness.

Creative producer Viveck Viswani has done a great deal to throw in sub laying colors to the stories and unique vibrance to them all. And for the use of classic songs, screenplay writer Sujit Sen has thankfully relegated to more mature topics for the romances instead of the usual parents are against it or forces against nature dilemma. Commendable as well that they have done so using a cast of fresh faces who are all young to cinema rather than established ‘mature’ actors. Unfortunately we can only ask for more from the stories that are the most interesting and less of the one which is the major building stone for the entire story of Dil Vil Pyar Vyar. Even though we’ve seen enough of the story of pride, with its constant use in cinema, it is still very attracting to the audience. However, when pinned against the tale of mourning one’s dead lover or overcoming a self-implied mental handicap, the emotions are relegated where they shouldn’t be. Thus even the present emotions are on a low as it is very hard to justify four unparallel stories just so much to get the audience to identify and feel.


The film starts out introducing the climax, which will bring the three couples together in the end. That is, the competition of singers, and the competitors are Hrithik (Jimmy Shergill), Dev (Sanjay Suri) and Krish (R. Madhavan). It then progresses with the tale of Jojo (Hrishitaa Bhatt) and Hrithik. Hrithik lives under his father’s rules, shadow and guidelines and on a train bumps into Jojo. Their romance slowly develops but Jojo quickly realizes that Hrithik is a product of his father’s dreams and more importantly, state of mind. Jojo realizes that there is no future to their relationship, though they both would like it, if Hrithik doesn’t step out of his father’s shoe and become his own man.

While jollying in the train station trying to catch Jojo, Hrithik bumps into Raksha (Namrata Shirodkar) and almost breaks her guitar. We then learn Raksha and Krish are a happy couple, both of successful musical backgrounds waiting to become bigger. Their story, themed with a blue color scheme gleams in uncertainty. Their happiness is never secure and that is eventually proven when Raksha’s solo, “Kya Jaano Saajan” becomes the big thing and circumstances cause Krish to lose out on his big opportunity to join in on Raksha’s success. Raksha and Krish must come together and understand what success truly means for individuals and for couples as well.

Later, Dev and sister Rachna (Bhavna Pani) encounter Gauri (Sonali Kulkarni) and her brother Gaurav (Rakesh Bapat). It soon becomes evident that they were meant to meet each other to provide help in a glooming situation but Dev too has his own situation to over come. Dev is mourning over his recently passed away wife. Similarly, Gaurav is morning over his lost girlfriend (Riya Sen). However, Gaurav has placed himself into a physical handicap, though he is physically fine, to help deal with the guilt from the accident that has killed his girlfriend.


Though, unfortunately, it is not through the fourteen songs that these four stories are woven together in the end, it is through the songs sung at the final competition where the resolutions for the designated stories are achieved.

The film is laced with R.D. Burman’s music repeatedly and for that matter, the impact is not negative at all. The songs provide a refreshing familiar change to something that is quite foreign to Indian cinema. With these, the creative aspect of the film never loses its heart. But, the relevance to the songs to the specific stories is at times zilch, and could have been applied to any other love story. The major complaint is not the choice of songs but the simple fact that the story here is not meant to idolize Mr. Burman through depicting the essence of his songs and the trouble he went through to compose them, but rather to simply utilize his songs. Perhaps a different story would have done that better.

Again, the sensitivity for Dev and Gaurav’s story is lacking but the interest is there. Sunjiv Puri, however, has managed to give them all the right knack with his cleverish ability to write accurate dialogues for the scenes. And some of the sequences match the unique feel of the film. The scene where Hrithik almost breaks the guitar is presented in another angle when Krish almost does it himself later out of anger. That and many other sequences show many levels of film making in Dil Vil Pyar Vyar. That aside, the film looks like it has been spilled with a five-gallon bucket of fluorescent paint. The colors are lively and the film never looks a tad bit stale in the cinematography department.

The background music compliments the film well. Barring a few annoying sequences involving unneeded character artists, the focus of the film is intact and there are no unnecessary comedians for the entire film. But this doesn’t keep the pace and length of the film in a workable parameter. The film drags for many sequences and is lengthy as it is. Sadly, the effort and time was not spent in giving each story the details but one more than the other.

There are things to revel at, aside from the music; fresh faces prove they can entertain. But some of them too are drawn back by lack of development. Namrata Shirodkar steals the limelight from the many, and though she is the most experienced, her evident talent does rank among the many bigger names the industry holds. Sonali Kulkarni is very average in her overly sympathetic role. For the most part her dialogue delivery is poor and she is meant to look sad and tell a story. It’s not until the latter part of the film do we see the actress who continuously has grown in her recent films.

Hrishitaa Bhatt’s role is small and though she continues to show confidence of an actress excellently, she doesn’t take the audience’s breathe away. Bhavna Pani makes an interesting debut. Her role being the smallest of them all, she manages successfully to cover the range of emotions required for the small role. But the lasting impression is not there.

It’s interesting that two female guest star for two songs, Riya Sen as Gaurav’s love interest in “Mere Samne Wali”, and Dipannita Sharma as Dev’s deceased wife in “Ab Ke Sawan”. Of the supporting characters,

Kiran Kumar as Hrithik’s father is shown the most and tries hard to add life to his listless character.

For the male stars, it is surprising that Rakesh Bapat has little to no dialogues to retort. The impression he left with us in Tum Bin has completely disappeared and his screen presence here is quite dull. Perhaps it is because his role is of little to no value but a few song and dances and no dialogues will not work. Sanjay Suri is meant to look distraught and is given a half-baked role to present. He is a little better than the former in bringing his role to life.

Jimmy Shergill is a little better than both of them and his choice of roles should be commended, even if they aren’t shooting him up high. R. Madhavan who enacts the main role, transverses through a number of emotions, which require more work than his Hindi debut role in Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein did. In many portions his emotions are raw but still his capability to lead a film as a solo hero is evident.

While negative comments may always be present, especially for a film that tries so much as Dil Vil Pyar Vyar does, they can and should be over looked. The idea of Dil Vil Pyar Vyar has been implemented in a workable (and more importantly, watchable) manner and shows that talent and creativity still exists in our oft-inspired industry. We should see more of this, that is of course, creativity and not inspiration.

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