STARRING

Rani Mukerji, Shahid Kapur, Anupam Kher, Sherlyn Chopra, Dalip Tahil, Rakhi Sawant, Vrajesh Hirjee, Sri Vallabh Vyas and others.


DIRECTION

Anurag Singh

STORY

The plot of ‘Dil Bole Hadippa’ revolves around the determined character of Veera Kaur (Rani Mukerji), who wants to play cricket with the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Indian Cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

But the problem is that Veera Kaur lives in a small village near Wagah border, where girls are not supposed to play cricket. To overcome this handicap, she changes herself in the garb of Veer Pratap Singh to fulfill her dreams.

On the other hand, Rohan (Shahid Kapur) is a very good player of cricket and also captains a county cricket team in England. He returns to the country to oversee the performance of his father’s (Anupam Kher) cricket team, which has been losing consistently for the last eight years to local Pakistani team from across the Wagah border.

 Veera, who works with a local theatre group in her village, dons turban and beard to play cricket. Her sheer brilliance forces Rohan to include her in his father’s team as one of its playing eleven members.

Here onwards, Veera becomes Veer Pratap Singh for Rohan’s team. What happens after that forms the rest of the story.



PERFORMANCE

Rani Mukherjee, who plays the character of Veera Kaur in the film, is brilliant. It is her performance that holds the audience’s attention in this otherwise failed venture from Yashraj stable. Rani is especially superb in her last speech making sequence where she pleads that girls be allowed to dream.

Rani Mukherjee looks fabulous in her new toned, shapely avatar. The actress oozes oomph effortlessly and has never looked better than this. Her chemistry with Shahid Kapur is good on the celluloid and able to bridge the age (?) gap as criticized by some cynical elements.

Shahid Kapur, who plays the part of a cricketer Rohan, has enacted his part well, but do not expect Vishal Bhardwaj’s ‘Kaminey’ magic here, because that just does not exist. His innocent face has something very likeable about it, no two opinions on that.

Sherlyn Chopra, who plays Miss Chandigarh, and Rakhi Sawant add oomph factor to the film but fail to make any contribution towards acting department. As expected, these glam dolls looked expressionless objects more than anything else.

 Sherlyn’s bikini act at the cricket pitch may invite some catcalls. Other actors have lent able support to the main cast of the flick.

The direction of Anurag Singh fails to impress and at best he is average at it. He seems to have taken everything from earlier Yashraj hits and tried to incorporate them in this project, but it has not worked. Other production values are average.

STARDUST VERDICT

Despite of presence of big stars like Rani Mukherjee and Shahid Kapur, the Yashraj flick will find it hard to attract audiences towards theatres. An average fare.

Star Rating: * *