Badrinath Ki Dulhaniya Trailer Tells Us Why Alia  & Varun Are The Best Of The New Breed

They are so comfortable together you could mistake them for a real-life couple. But AliaBhatt and Varun Dhawan are just faking it in Badrinath Ki Dulhaniya(BKD).

And if this is how well they jell in pretence, I wonder what they would look like on screen  if they were really in love!

Hmmmmm…the mind wanders and the imagination boggles while Varun-Alia dazzle with their desi chemistry.

BKD is what we would call a sureshot winner. There’s no way it could go wrong at theboxoffice. It isn’t great cinema. But its cinema  that loves cinema. It slurps on the juice and gravy of the conventions and licks it down uncaring of staring eye. It’s fulsome in its love for Bollywood traditions. It makes telling use of retro music and situations.

The trailer opens with the legendary voice of  radio announcer(those days, we didn’t have r-js and anchors) Amin Sayani and proceeds to show us Varun and Alia thumping the floor to the sound of Bappi Lahiri’s rip-off Tamma tamma (it was actually borrowed  from an international chartbuster by Mori Kante).

BKD is  also a kind of tongue-in-cheek homage, partly serious but done with a  whole lot ofspoofy spiffiness. As in the courtship conventions of  films from the 1970s and 80s  the hero hounds the heroine everywhere …in her dreams,on the laptop, in a bus, at  an eatery and so on. Alia handles the unwanted attention with  a refreshing blend of disapproval and amusement.

Her comic timing in her semi-urban avatar are as charming as her metropolitan posturing inDear Zindagi and her Bihari migrant act in Udta Punjab . Is there no end to what this girl can do? As for Varun,  his comic timing and his utterly endearing ability to laugh at himself—watch him  in the scene where he’s being clicked by a pesky photographer–   makes him move far ahead of his competition. If we can call Aditya Roy Kapoor ,Arjun Kapoor andSiddharth Malhotra’s Varun’s competitors.

Refreshingly the BKD trailer takes us into the Indian heartland. These are people who really love Hindi films and their songs. They are not faking it in London Paris and Amsterda, likeRanbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil.When those two inMushkil(more like Music Kill)  danced  to Bappi Lahiri’s songs they seemed to be doing nostalgia a favour. Alia and Varun have actual fun with the conventions of the past.

This is a desi film with a big desi heart beating fast when Tamma tamma  plays on the radio.

It can’t get more filmy than this.