Dulha Mil Gaya... and then what went wrong?

CommentMudassar Aziz's maiden venture Dulha Mil Gaya has finally been completed. It's always important to give first-time directors a little leeway for errors. Direction may not be rocket science but debut projects often has some raw edges.

Mudassar was lucky enough to cast Sushmita Sen and Shah Rukh Khan together. These two nearly set the screen on fire with their sizzling chemistry in Main Hoon Na .

DMG also stars Fardeen Khan and veterans like Johnny Lever and Parikshit Sahni. With such a talented cast the least one expected was a fun, watchable film. Unfortunately, DMG reminded me of a film which keeps taxiing down the runway but never really takes off.

The film opens in Trinidad with a spoilt brat son, who hopes to inherit millions from his deceased father's estate. But Tej Dhanraj, also known as Donsai (Fardeen Khan), is in for a rude shock. He has just a few days time to marry Samarpreet Kapoor (Ishitta Sharrma), a girl from rural Punjab .

This is a theme which was hugely popular in romance novels and movies in the 1960s and 1970s. The director could have kept us engrossed by taking the story to a new level. But Mudassar Aziz sticks to the tried-and-tested. Samarpreet remains the 'sati savitri' type, who will go to any lengths to woo her husband.

But this Herculean task cannot be managed single-handedly. So Samarpreet receives help from Shimmer (Sushmita Sen) and Pawan Raj Gandhi (SRK ). Shimmer is ashamed of Donsai's behaviour. She hopes to reform him but fails to realise that she is equally commitment phobic. Mudassar in text-book fashion introduces his characters in the first 30 minutes and then for the next two hours, the film keeps plodding its way towards a dreary, predictable end.