Movie review: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008)

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi is a romantic comedy where a dancing competition (Dancing Jodi) play a big role. Surinder Sahni is a regular guy who works for Punjabi Power and leads monotonous life, a stereotypical beta male. Taani is a young woman who faces hardship as his prospective husband dies and his father gets a heart attack.

In his deathbed, Taani's father tells Taani and Surinder to marry, because Sur is the only man he can entrust Taani. Taani agrees, but tells that he can never love Sur. It's a romantic comedy which happens inside an arranged marriage.

Taani wants to join a dancing course, and Sur gives him the money. On a whim, Sur also goes to the dancing course but only after his friend Bobby talks him around to dress with a new haircut, fashionable clothes and playboy attitude, completely changing his outlook.

When dancing course participants are paired for dancing competition, Taani and Sur happen to get the same number, but Taani doesn't recognize him because of the vast difference in dress and flirty alpha male behaviour. This goes on and is the central tension of the movie.

In Western movies, there's no way a boring, hesitant 40-something beta male could marry a young dancing girl because of the difference in sexual market value. In this movie, Taani hates both "beta Sur's" lack of initative and atttitude, and also "alpha Sur's" pretentious macho role. The message of the movie is that a good Indian man should be a balanced combination of provider beta and flamboyant alpha roles. Women like men whose personality works for them in a wide variety of situations.

The movie is driven by the personalities of Shahrukh Khan (a huge star in Bollywood) and Anushka Sharma. The cinematic storytelling was great, the film was comprehensible despite being a Hindi movie without English subtitles. Dancing scenes were great and they expressed the joy of love and the tension of sexual market value difference better than any amount of Western-style close pictures about faces can. Western movies miss a lot by not including dance scenes. It could have been shorter though.