Review: 'Will You Marry Me?'

Film: Will You Marry Me?
Director: Aditya Datt
Cast: Rajeev Khandelwal, Muzamil Ibrahim, Mughdha Godse, Tripta Parashar, Paresh Rawal, Celina Jaitly
Rating: **

It’s graduation day. Will you Marry Me? opens with an assorted group of three friends. Nikhil (Muzamil Ibrahim) is in love with childhood sweetheart Anjali (Tripta Parashar), chickening out every time he thinks of proposing marriage (which fresh grad thinks of marriage so early on, you wonder.) Aarav (Shreyas Talpade) is the good guy who’d want to preserve his virginity for the ever elusive ‘the one’. The black sheep of the trio is Rajveer (Rajeev Khandelwal), always horny, disreputable and more or less a shame to their friendship. So typical of buddy films.

Three years after graduation, at a reunion-cum-bachelor party of a batch mate, compulsive gambler Rajveer convinces a dozen friends to invest in Reliance shares. The condition being, one who stays unmarried at the end gets all the shares. Confident of never giving up his Casanova ways, Rajveer’s wily mind has already worked out how rich he’d be after all his mates got married.

Most of the drama unveils in Dubai, where Nikhil and Anjali are about to get married. Enter gutkha king Paresh Rawal and the meandering plot gets a facelift. With pressures of Nikhil’s wedding piling on and Rajveer’s faulty investments busted, Will You Marry Me? takes a whole new route where lives are on the line, friendships crumble and love happens.

There’s so much in the film, sadly, none of it enough to keep you entertained for long. There’s always something amiss, coming in the way of it being a great watch. It has its moments of fun, but can’t stand its own. Aditya Datt’s direction falls short when most of his actors flirt with the blurry line between tolerable acting and outright hamming. Ibrahim and the usually bankable comic actor Talpade ham their way throughout. Talpade is, however, impressive in the monologue toilet scene. Khandelwal is adorable in character and spirit, making Will You Marry Me? watchable. The numerous songs, including one mocking homosexuals in a bar, are plain painful.

Abrupt cuts and off-sync sound in many parts add to the woes of Will You Marry Me? If only the director hadn’t tried so hard to make Rajveer look so bad, the film could have wound up crisper and happy.

Since you don’t see Rajeev Khandelwal much on the screen, his fans may be in for a surprise. And the others who’re not, you wouldn’t be missing much of you skipped Will You Marry Me?