Film Impressions

REVIEW: Do Dooni Chaar (2)

THEY ARE FAMILY

Every middle class family that knows what it is like to stretch the family budget will identify with the Duggal family in Habib Faisal’s Do Dooni Char.

Rishi and Neetu Kapoor Kapoor, a glamorous star couple in real life, play the beleaguered Santosh and Kusum Duggal. He is a schoolteacher whose meagre income, in spite of moonlighting at a coaching class, barely covers basic expenses and the growing demands of teenage kids Sandeep (Archit Krishna) and Payal (Aditi Vasudev). The old fridge groans, the new TV is just a dream, and fancy things like ipods are not even considered.

REVIEW: Do Dooni Chaar

A PLEASANT RIDE

When was the last time you saw a family in a Hindi film that looks like a family and not like over-made up, over-acting stars and wannabes pretending to be one? How often do we see a film these days, that talks of decency, honesty and simplicity as virtues and not inconvenient tics that need to be discarded in the interest of material progress? For that matter, why has the great Indian middle-class disappeared almost entirely from celluloid and been replaced by shallow aspirational fantasies of mindless consumerism where even the poor wear leather jackets and the rich live in the US? 

First-time director Habib Faisal's Do Dooni Chaar is perhaps the first film of its kind after Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006). It's a lighter, sweeter film, but the atmosphere and setting is much the same. It also marks the return to screen of the charming Neetu Singh alongside husband Rishi Kapoor, 30 years after their youthful romantic films. Watching these two effortless actors in a small, unfussy vehicle that rides entirely on their charisma, serves a painful reminder of the acute paucity of talent in contemporary cinema.