Will You Marry Me? Review

Three friends, Shreyas Talpade, Rajeev Khandelwal and Muzammil Ibrahim, have different views on love. The one who gets does not marry will stand to win a huge amount of money in the form of shares in a blue chip company. Things go wrong even as Muzammil is about to get married, because of the greed of Rajeev. Read the review of Will You Marry Me? for more.

Business rating: 0.5 /5 (Half star)

Star cast: Shreyas Talpade, Rajeev Khandelwal, Muzammil Ibrahim, Mugdha Godse, Tripta Parashar, Manoj Joshi, Paresh Rawal.

What’s Good: Hardly anything!

What’s Bad: The juvenile script; the poor performances.

Verdict: Will You Marry Me? will lose the box-office battle.

Loo break: Several.

Watch or Not?: Watch it if you want to know how things can go wrong with a film.

Ikkon Productions’ Will You Marry Me? (UA) is the story of three very close friends – Aarav (Shreyas Talpade), Rajveer (Rajeev Khandelwal) and Nikhil (Muzammil Ibrahim). The trio as also a group of more friends invest money to buy 1 lakh shares in a blue chip company with the express understanding that all the shares would finally go to the person who doesn’t get married. As the friends get married one by one, the competition narrows down till finally, only Aarav, Rajveer and Nikhil remain bachelors. Nikhil believes in love and marriage, Rajveer is a playboy and Aarav can never come around to wooing a girl although he is quite straightforward and respects women.

One day, Nikhil announces his intention to marry girlfriend Anjali (Tripta Parashar), leaving Rajveer and Aarav as likely candidates to win the shares which have, over the years, increased in value. Even as arrangements for Nikhil’s marriage are underway, Rajveer invests a gutkha baron’s (Paresh Rawal) money – Rs. 5 crore – which he holds in trust for a few days, in the shares of another blue chip company with the intention of making quick money for himself and returning the principal amount to the gutkha baron. As luck would have it, the value of the blue chip company’s shares nosedives in the share bazaar and Rajveer can’t recover anything of the Rs. 5 crore invested, leave alone making a huge profit. The businessman now threatens to not let Nikhil get married if Rajveer doesn’t return his money within a week. Alternatively, he would make any one of them eat his gutkha till the over-consumption killed him.

Rajveer and Nikhil are tense but don’t reveal anything to Aarav. Meanwhile, Sneha (Mugdha Godse), a friend of Anjali, has arrived for the wedding. Both, Rajveer and Aarav, are mad about her and, in a bid to woo her, do everything to win her attention and to keep her away from the other. Just a couple of days before the wedding day, Anjali’s father gives Rs. 2 crore in cash to Nikhil to pay for the hotel expenses, if the need arose, as he has to go out of town on an urgent business call. Rajveer’s manipulative mind starts ticking on seeing the cash and he forces Nikhil to let him bet on the ongoing cricket matches to multiply the Rs. 2 crore so that they can pay off the gutkha baron. Again, to their misfortune, they lose the Rs. 2 crore rather than multiplying the money.

The only alternative left to them now is to get Aarav married to Sneha so that the shares of the first blue-chip company would come to Rajveer; he would sell them and return the monies of the gutkha baron as well as Anjali’s dad. But there’s a twist there too as it is not so easy to get Aarav and Sneha married. As the wedding date is nearing, the tension is mounting. Nikhil and Rajveer stand exposed in front of Anjali’s father who then calls off the wedding. Aware by now of the chain of events, Aarav decides to act.

What does Aarav do? Does he succeed in ensuring that Nikhil gets married to Anjali? Or does Anjali’s father not let the marriage happen? What about Sneha? Does she marry Rajveer or Aarav? What happens to the shares of the blue chip company – do they go to Rajveer or Aarav? Do they come in handy to pay off the debts? What about the friendship of Aarav, Rajveer and Nikhil?

Will You Marry Me? Review: Script Analysis

Aditya V. Datt’s story and screenplay are so juvenile that it’s a wonder, anybody could green-light a film based on it. Why would friends invest money in a blue chip company with the express understanding that only one of them – who did not get married – would be the beneficiary? It is not as if people generally don’t get married, so why would anybody play a game in which his chance of losing was 99%? And what if everyone got married? Just like the silly game they play, the friends have also, quite stupidly, not been shown to be bothered about other eventualities.

The angle of Rajveer and Aarav trying to woo Sneha is kiddish. Also, it is strange how Aarav never thinks of the investment when he is planning to marry Sneha. For, if he had thought of the blue chip company shares, he’d have instantly understood why Nikhil was literally pushing him into the marriage. But as things stand, he keeps wondering why Nikhil is keen to get him married so fast. Also, once Aarav comes to know about the problem Rajveer has landed himself in, he goes to the gutkha baron to become the guinea pig for his gutkha. Instead, why doesn’t he simply sell off the company shares after taking Rajveer’s signature on them? Rajveer surely couldn’t have had any objection to the sale. Instead, Aarav is shown to be fighting with Rajveer for not having let him into the problems he had landed in, saying, he could easily have encashed the shares. But why, after learning of the problem from whatever source, did he not encash the shares?

The love triangle of Aarav, Sneha and Rajveer is weird. Also, it is not clear whether Sneha loves Aarav or Rajveer. The bond of friendship of Aarav, Rajveer and Nikhil is also quite strange because although they are supposed to be best buddies, they behave otherwise. For instance, Aarav and Rajveer can’t stand each other and call each other names. As for Nikhil, he even asks Aarav and Rajveer to get out of his house when his girlfriend’s parents are due to come home. Also, why Rajveer and Nikhil hide the fact about the loss of the Rs. 5 crore first and the Rs. 2 crore later is unexplained.

Another silly twist is about Rajveer trying to multiply the money of Anjali’s dad, given by the latter to Nikhil for a particular purpose, after burning his (Rajveer’s) fingers in a previous case (money of the gutkha baron). How Nikhil could allow him to try his (terrible) luck is a wonder.

All in all, Aditya V. Datt’s screenplay has so many holes in it that it is disturbing. Jay Master’s dialogues are as ordinary as ordinary can be.

Will You Marry Me? Review: Star Performances

Shreyas Talpade does a fair job. He is good in the scene in which he fights with Rajeev Khandelwal towards the end. Rajeev Khandelwal, looking terribly awkward in the wig, is strictly average. He should either take lessons in English pronunciations or avoid using English words! Muzammil Ibrahim is wooden. Mugdha Godse performs ordinarily and, like Rajeev Khandelwal, she too needs to greatly improve her English pronunciations. Tripta Parashar is poor; her English also leaves plenty to be desired. Manoj Joshi fills the bill, again pronouncing English words as if he were speaking in Sanskrit. Paresh Rawal fails to impress and looks completely disinterested in the drama. Celina Jaitley doesn’t have much to do. It appears as if her role has been cut short. Nishigandha Wad (as Anjali’s mother), Deepak Dadwal (as Nikhil’s father), Neeta Jhanji (as Nikhil’s mother), Bobby Darling and the rest of the cast provide ordinary support.

Will You Marry Me? Review: Direction & Music

Aditya V. Datt’s direction, limited as it is by his own script, is dull. His narrative style fails to involve the audience. Music (Sachin Gupta, Sharib-Toshi, Amjad-Nadeem and Gaurav Dagaonkar) is okay. No song stands out, neither for the compostion nor for the lyrics (Turaz, Kumaar, Shabbir Ahmed and Gaurav Dagaonkar). Song picturisations (choreographers: Remo D’souza, Shabina Khan and Pony Verma) are routine. Sachin Gupta’s background score passes muster. Stunts (by Javed Karim and Hanif Sheikh) are commonplace. Camerawork (Dwaraganath Rangaraj) is average. Sets (Sanjay Dhapade and Anjan Gajurel) are okay. Editing (Irfan Shaikh) needed to be much sharper.

Will You Marry Me? Review: Komal Nahta’s Verdict

On the whole, Will You Marry Me? is a dull fare with very little to entertain. Given the poor start on the one hand and lack of merits on the other, it will meet with unfavourable results at the box-office.

Will You Marry Me? releases in India on 2 March 2012.

Will You Marry Me? Trailer

Komal Nahta, the Editor of Koimoi.com, is Bollywood’s most trusted trade analyst & film reviewer. You can follow him on Twitter and check out his Video Blog.