BAND BAAJA BAARAAT (2 DISC COLLECTORS EDITION DVD)

BBB is a remarkable film and one of the freshest one to appear in recent times and certainly has repeat viewing value. A talented debutant director, Maneesh Sharma, a great writer Habib Faisal and two young actors put on a remarkable show with the script serving as their vehicle. BBB is about the new changes that have appeared in Indian Cinema, the star system is largely reserved for big names and releases but a younger generation of storytellers and directors are making the stories fresher and livelier. BBB captures the business of wedding planning and the essence of the drive of young entrepreneurs who are trying to make it big.
Bittu ( Ranveer Singh) is in college but dreads completing it as he would have would have to go back to his village to work with his father. Shruti ( Anushka Sharma) is in the final year of college, but education is only an obstacle, she wants to put together a successful wedding planning business before getting married to any man of her parents choice. They met at a wedding and soon end up as partners in a wedding planning business. Their partnership is successful and they start getting busier. After a unusually successful wedding, they celebrate with alcohol and end up sleeping with each other. Bittu does not want a relationship but Shruti has fallen in love with him. This starts affecting their partnership and a result they part ways.
BBB works because the casting is superb, Anushka and Ranveer Singh, they sizzle and burn the screen with their energy and chemistry. Most of the characters speak with a North Indian accent and the dialogue delivery and writing is flawless. Anushka shows that she is here to stay and Ranveer can be safely assumed is destined for greater things i.e. if he makes the right choice of films and does not mess things up for himself. His energy reminded me of a young SRK in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na. The movie has a great soundtrack and each song is a blockbuster. The songs have been pictured beautifully, colorfully and capture just like the film, the euphoria of a wedding in India. Not to be missed. Five stars.

It is damn hard for a gal and a guy - especially when they're good-looking - to remain simply platonic friends. And BAND BAAJA BAARAAT demonstrates this yet again. BAND BAAJA BAARAAT (meaning: "Bands Horns and Revelry") is a pretty good Bollywood romantic comedy, of which first half is tremendously entertaining. But then we get to the post-intermission stuff.

Bittoo Sharma (Ranveer Singh) is a farmer's son attending a Delhi university. Bittoo blanches at the notion of going back home to work in his father's sugar cane fields, and maybe it's to distract himself that he goofs off so much during his senior year at college. Crashing a wedding party one evening and about to cram some good grub on his plate, he's called to task by disapproving fellow student Shruti Kakkar (Anushka Sharma). Shruti, who with her aunt had coordinated the wedding party, isn't about to feed uninvited riff raff like Bittoo. They become friends anyway.

Shruti is one of those ambitious young women who knows her own mind, has a crystal clear vision of her future. She's given herself a five-year timeline in which marriage is kicked to the curb so that she could focus on launching her own wedding planning company. When Bittoo's father comes to Delhi to buy a tractor and to take his son home, a panicky Bittoo declares that he also has gone into the highly lucrative wedding planning business. He even talks Shruti into taking him on as her business partner.

The extremely career-oriented Shruti has one caveat: "Jisse vyapaar karo, usse kabhi na pyaar karo." Translation: "Don't mix business with pleasure." But we all know how that works out.

As mentioned, the first hour of BAND BAAJA BAARAAT is immensely watchable. It tracks Shruti and Bittoo's fledgling "Shaadi Mubarak" - the name of their wedding planning venture - as it gets off the ground. Shaadi Mubarak builds up its rep by making a success of a series of low-budgeted weddings. It's fun to observe Shruti and Bittoo applying their imagination and resourcefulness and their friends to bolster their meager purse. These scenes are enlivened with a fusion of vivid colors and bright exuberance and an infectious joyfulness - all of which happen to be some of the best elements in Indian cinema. I loved it.

And then the expected happens, and the story spirals down to this glum melodrama. Everything falls apart for Shruti and Bittoo. And the fiance whom Shruti has been keeping a secret from Bittoo (and from you and me) is the least of their problems, really.

So promising in her debut in RAB NE BANA DI JODI (awesome movie!), Anushka Sharma doesn't let you down here. Her terrific acting anchors the story and drives the film's emotional beats. This is Ranveer Singh's first picture and he's energetic and has presence. There's a playfulness about him, and he delivers his lines with the mischief of an Akshay Kumar. But Ranveer's performance isn't as nuanced as Anushka's. He certainly doesn't inject as much substance into his character. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if the ladies in the audience, in eyeballing him, are boisterously practicing their wolf whistles. And you can't discount that spark between Ranveer and Anuskha.

The item numbers can be savored for their liveliness and for the dazzling colors of the costumes and the sets, but the songs themselves are lacking that immediate punch. The choreography is sort of tame, even that of the intended showstopper "DumDum," in which Bittoo and Shruti fill in for Shah Rukh Khan who can't dance at the lavish wedding because of an injured leg (and, no, Shah Rukh isn't in this movie at all). I will say that Anushka Sharma is very graceful in her dancing. And if you're an actor who can act AND dance in Bollywood, then life for you, friend, is an endless parade of "band, baaja, and baaraat." Hopefully I used that phrase right. BAND BAAJA BAARAAT rates 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on Anushka's performance and that satisfying first hour. Oh, and also on that pretty damn sexy kiss exchanged between Anushka and Ranveer. Once in a blue moon, Bollywood does get steamy. Only, how often do you get a blue moon?

What I've got is the two-disc set. Disc 1 has the feature film and an option to select the film's musical numbers for viewing. Disc 2 has the following bonus features, enough of them in English that non-Hindi-speaking viewers can more or less follow along:

- Making of the Film featurette (00:21:36 minutes long)
- Making of the "Ainvayi Ainvayi" musical number (00:05:31 minutes)
- "BBB Sangeet Event" - a show promoting the film, the highlights of which are Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma's live stage performances as they dance to songs from the movie and also their hosting of a "Who's the Best Jodi?" contest (00:23:05)
- BBB Wedding Event - Anushka, Ranveer, and director Maneesh Sharma attend a wedding (00:05:16)
- BBB Wedding - to promote the film, the production company throws a wedding bash on a dhow cruise in Dubai (00:03:57)
- 5 Deleted Scenes with no English sub-titles (totaling 00:12:04 minutes)
- theatrical trailer & promos
- and two music videos: "DumDum Remix" and "Tarkeebein"

All I can say is WOW! What a HUGE SURPRISE this movie turned out to be! One of the best Bollywood's I've seen. Very fun and colorful, but also touching, and romantic. The on screen chemistry between the two leads is amazing and real. Premise; Typical story where she's the hard worker with the big dreams, and he the slacker who's just at college to party. She tells him she's starting a wedding planning business right after graduation. He laughs at her ideas, until his Dad comes to the school to take him home. When he realizes that he doesn't want to go back to the sugarcane fields for the rest of his life, he lies and tells his Dad that he's going into business with her. They agree to run their business honestly, just as friends -no strings-no romantic involvement. Starting out small, they quickly build up, by delivering inexpensive, cute and extremely fun weddings. Moving onto bigger and better, one night after their first bug success, they get drunk, and sleep together. (This is actually a very sensual, romantic, and beautiful scene. ) In the morning she realizes, that she loves him, but he's freaked out by the whole thing. They are already best friends, but he doesn't know how to react, and he screws it up big time. They fight, and it escalates until they split, and break up the company. As all their success came from working together, it's no big surprise that their business fails separated as they are. They are both really stubborn, and refuse to work together. A HUGE prospective client comes to them and tells them that he will only work with them if they agree to work together. As they are now in debt on their own, they agree for only this one time. The ending credit scenes with the curtain call of all the couples that they helped is really cute. Loved the fun feel in the first half, and typical Bollywood style, second half is more dramatic, and serious. This movie made me laugh out loud though, very fun, and highly entertaining!