Hadippa!! :D

Yesterday was a great day! To start with, I went to watch Dil Bole Hadippa and it was a fun movie, albeit a tad over the top, a tad too reminiscent of Chak de India and a tad silly. I'm just about to write a review but before that, guess what? I landed my first job yesterday! As an editor for a study-abroad consultancy. I'll be working part time from home over the internet and I'm nervous as hell about everything going all right but excited too! Really, God is great. :) (*Thank you, God, once again!*) Though perhaps watching Shahid early in the morning was kind of like a good luck charm too. :P
Right, so about Dil Bole..., I liked it for its girl-power quotient (we can do anything that we put our minds and hearts to regardless of what anyone thinks, says or does to hamper us) and the patriotic theme which not only evokes a rush of love and pride for our incredible India but also works in a spot of tenderness for our infamous neighbours across the border who, after all, are not much different from us once we put aside the age-old prejudices and really think about it.
Rani Mukherjee has acted well, but I do think she could have attempted to diguise her tell-tale voice while in her male avatar. Also, those shapely eyebrows could have been covered up with stick-on ones to make the character of Veer more convincing. As Veera, she looks beautiful and I love the colorful desi clothes that splendidly contrast with the picturesque green and gold backdrop of the sprawling fields of Amritsar.
As for Shahid Kapur, I can't promise to be entirely unbiased but he was amazing as the aggressive, bursting-with-testosterone, cricket coach from England who falls hopelessly in love with both his home country and the fiesty Punjabi kudi, aka 'buffalo-girl' Veera who introduces him to its myriad flavors.
(On an aside, I love Shahid's rippling muscles, the chiselled bod, the cool hair, the swift dance moves, the sharp acting skills, and that sweet smile that literally makes my heart flutter!)
I don't know why people are giving the movie so much flak just because it has a vague resemblence to the Hollywood flick She's the Man. For your information, people, She's the Man wasn't entirely original either. The premise was based on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. If that's not a problem, then why is it always such a big deal when a Hindi movie takes inspiration from it's English counterpart? Besides, I read somewhere that no story is new. Everything has already been told before. What's new is the way it is told and the characterisation and dialog and settings. And as far as that is concerned, Dil Bole... is different and has a feel-good charm about it. There is no scene at all that is blindly copied from She's the Man. It's a story in its own right.
I also don't know why people give cricket so much flak. Big deal if it hogs all the limelight from other sports here in India. There must be a reason, right? Cricket is interesting; it's fun! I'm not a particularly great fan of the test and 50-over version but 20-20 is always exciting. And the cricket in the movie was just the same. Ok, so we knew all along it would be a nice happy ending but isn't that just the point? Don't we always expect and WANT a nice happy ending?
If you read (or in this case, 'observe') between the lines of the overall story, you find undercurrents of important messages about love, life, family, hypocrisy, discrimination against the fairer sex, unity and peace.
Sherlyn Chopra and Rakhi Sawant are mere decorations in the movie, quite garish ones at that.
Disco waale Khisko and the title track are nice, catchy songs, but Jhappiyaan se desh hai mera steals the show with it's beautiful lyrics and melodious flow.
All in all, Dil Bole Hadippa, even if it disappoints you, will at the very least make you fall in love with India all over again. After all, 'tu door jitna jaaye, ye paas utna aaye, kab dil tera le jaye, yahaan pe ishq hi hai rab aur khuda soniya!'