Review of Tanu Weds Manu

First the verdict: I will go with 3.5/5. Despite the name, this movie is a love story and not about wedding, just like the recent movie Band Baaja Baarat, which was also a love story and not about wedding planners. This movie works. I will talk about it in a bit. But before that, bit on love stories and new crop of directors.

The danger in critiquing a love story is that many critics latch on to similarity of parts of a movie to other movies of the past, and thereby condemn it as an old wine in a new bottle. I don't think there is any love story where parts of it is not similar to a movie of the past. That said there is no dearth of stupid and mindless love stories that many churn out with disastrous box office results, especially down south in India. I would therefore place my bets with directors who bring fresh perspective and treatment to story telling and successfully keep the audience engaged, and IMHO this is what this director Aanand Rai has done. With this movie, Aanand has added his name amongst new crop of directors who either bring new perspective to an existing theme or bring on unique story lines in an engaging manner like in Band Baaja Baarat, Wake up Sid, I Hate Luv Storys, Tere Bin Laaden, Phas Gaye Re Obama, No One Killed Jessica, Peepli Live, Aamir etc.

The story is simple with an NRI doctor being forced to come home by his parents to look for a suitable bride in a traditional arranged marriage scenario. He sees the first girl and falls deeply in love with her even though she happened to be in a state of inebriation. Not only that, she tell him subsequently to bugger off as she already has a boyfriend and is planning marry him only. So far, nothing new in the story. However, the treatment of the typical boy-meets-girl in the traditional setting and understated acting by Madhavan coupled with the freewheeling acting by Kangna Ranut has kept the pace of the movie without many dull moments. In fact you keep rooting for Madhavan's character of Manu Sharma whose heart is in the right place and believes in doing the right thing even though that would end up him losing the only girls whom he ever loved. He shows his courage by doing the right thing and not resort to violence, dramatics, or guilt trips. At the same time you don't feel antagonized with Kangan's character Tanu as she continues to reject Manu's overtures. Both of them have acted superbly. After her idiotic acting thanks to inept direction in Tees Maar Khan, Kangna once again proves to be a formidable actor. Her whole demeanor suddenly undergoes a metamorphosis from rebellious to sensitive when she sees what present Manu has brought for her wedding to her boyfriend and that's where she starts to realize that while her boyfriend wants her to serve himself, Manu wants her for her own sake.

Music is another highlight of the movie. Though purely as a music album, it might not have much of a repeat value, the tracks fit to the T as great background music throughout the movie with not a single lip sync run-around-the-tree type of scenes. Other great highlights of this movie are superb dialog and great acting by supporting actors - Deepak Dobriyal as Madhavan's friend, Eijaz Khan as a sikh bridegroom, and Swara Bhaskar as Kangna's friend. Swara is so good that she should actually be a candidate for female lead with her superb acting good looks. Eijaz as Jassi is great. There is an undercurrent of humor throughout the movie, which also helps keep audience entertained.

This movie is a good family entertainer and brings new perspective to telling love stories in the vein of Jab We Met and Band Baaja Baarat. Go watch it.

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Comment by Manish Narang on April 8, 2011 at 3:53pm: I don't know, bud, the guy was just way too nice. He was bending over backwards throughout the movie, needless to say, it was infatuation at first site. I couldn't relate so it Didn't do it for me, although, music was good

Comment by Jennifer Hopfinger on March 1, 2011 at 8:26am: Thanks for the great review! Keep 'em coming.