Banner - Dharma Productions
Director - Tarun Mansukhani
Producer - Karan Johar
Music - Vishal Dadlani & Shekhar Ravjiani
Director - Tarun Mansukhani
Producer - Karan Johar
Music - Vishal Dadlani & Shekhar Ravjiani
Cast - John Abraham, Priyanka Chopra, Abhishek Bachchan, Kiran Kher, Bobby Deol
Release date: 14 November 2008
Genres: Drama, Romance, Comedy
Genres: Drama, Romance, Comedy
Hot! The first-time writer-director, Tarun Mansukhani, pushes a creaky plot - two guys pretending to be gay - to levels of farce. The result is one of fastest paced, and deliriously enjoyable, Bollywood movies in recent memory that is also a comic paen to tolerance. The movie pushes aside the question of "Are they, or arent they?" to the last minute (watch the epilogue, and you may still argue about which side of the fence the boys built their dream home on). In spirit and crackle, if not the drag, this is a Bollywood Some Like It Hot, which not coincidentally was also set in Miami. In the heat, everyone gets gently skewered one way or another, without breaking not so much into sweat but, typically, song. The best of an iTunes-worthy lot: the opener Shut Up and Bounce and the closing Maa Da Ladla remix. The four leads (Abhishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, John Abraham, and John Abrahams toned body) create their chosen family with such astonishing ease, the result is positively infectious and hugely appealing. In this, Dostana, more than any other Bollywood production, nails the exuberance of today's India - super-confident, international to the bone, and polished enough to show Hollywood how its done on its own turf. No wonder Dostana 2 is already in the works. If they can pull it off, Karan Johar & Company will have a franchise on their hands, with the Abhishek-Abraham combo triumphant in almost any setting. Of course, the final installment of such a series would settle the "Are they, or aren't they?" question once and for all - and in the affirmative, which this movie, already, suggests we consider in our hearts. Dostana, you're quite something - a delectable jalebi of movie that also packs an elixir for a better world.