Despite the innovative campaign where lead pair Aditya Roy Kapur and Parineeti go on
a food yatra across the country in order to promote their film and a trailer that promises a
spicy love story, Daawat e Ishq is a much diluted and bland offering.
The romance in this apparent feast of love is lacklustre and characterized by a complete
lack of chemistry between the lead pair. But the the greatest disappointment is the fact
that what is touted a film which celebrates food, barely offers a hat tip to the culinary
heritage of the food capitals of Hyderabad and Lucknow with plates of seekh kababs,
oily biryanis and greasy kormas inserted at random points in the film providing an
unappetizing window into a gastronomy that is believed to be unmatched. A closeup of
a half-finished kebab, mutilated mutton sticking to a few grains of rice and a quickly
congealing bowl of salan at the famous Naaz hotel near Charminar at Hyderabad does
little justice to the food or the place. Similarly a bizarre shot in Lucknow focussing on a
closeup of the grease on a bowl of nihari is neither appetizing nor aesthetically appealing.
The complete lack of reference to the biryani rivalry between the two cities apart from a
passing comment by Kapur's Haider based on a few bites of food court fare, will leave
foodie members of the audience deeply unsatisfied.
Director and writer Habib Faisal's previous outings in films like Band Baaja Baraat, Do
Dooni Chaar proved his mettle as a scriptwriter who had his finger on a certain suburban
middle class ethos and brought the local voices to the fore in all their loudmouthed and
honest splendour. However, with Daawat e Ishq, Faisal's writing fails to impress on all
counts proving to be one of the weakest links in the film.
The script starts off on a strong note establishing Gullu as an English medium-educated
shoe salesgirl of marriageable age who is trying to simultaneously find a good husband
and fulfill her dreams. However, in both cases her dreams take a beating
as her suitors all demand a sizeable dowry or "help" in furthering their own prospects
in foreign climes and are far from suitable. They even include a 'blue film' watching
CV faker who is taken down a peg or two by the feisty heroine. Parineeti's relationship
with her bumbling and meek widower father played by Anupam Kher is etched with
with tenderness and a wry sense of humour. As an honest legal clerk, he is as much of
an anomaly as his his well-educated daughter who has to tolerate insufferable customers
who walk into the swanky shoe store in an upscale mall with a "thank you madam"
and unwavering smile. Credit must be given to Parineeti who plays Hyderabad ki tez
Gulrez with great spunk, essaying her part of a disillusioned shoe salesgirl who dreams of
making it big and having her own line of footwear with conviction. She invests as much
in her nuanced Hyderabadi dialect as she does in the body language of the Dubai-returned
designer kurta-wearing Sania Habibullah.
The first hour of the film is full of promise and potential. Set in Hyderabad, an ancient-
modern city, straddling the spires of Charminar and the glitzy chrome and glass IT offices
with ease, it reveals snippets of lower-middle class India with sub-30k salaries and living
in the older parts of modern cities as seen in the lives of Gulrez Quader, her father and
their curious and often irate neighbours like Bilquis. One of the film's strong points in the
first half is its clever handling of its social message. The practice of dowry is obviously
condemned but in a humorous manner, turning the dowry demanders into comical stock
characters who perform as per their stereotype.
However, the plot begins to unravel from the moment the father-daughter duo arrive
in Lucknow as newly christened con artists out to exploit dowry hunters as well as the
legal system. The story takes absurd twists and turns and from a fairly realist framework
enters the realm of ill placed platters of orange kebabs and choreographed Bollywood
routines. This is unfortunately also the point where Aditya Roy Kapur is introduced as the
effervescent and over the top Lucknow ka ashiq Tariq, who flips his sheermals, greases
his kebab skewers and bedazzles female tourists with his easy charm and generosity.
He is ready with a smile or a kebab as the occasion might demand. The usually posh,
brooding and soft-spoken Kapur clad in ridiculous shirts is fairly convincing as "Taru"
Haider. His only flaw is that he is the victim of an ill-conceived script that goes nowhere
and delivers little by virtue of a romance or a feast. The three day "tuning-setting"
formula between the lead pair is an endless and boring song and dance routine set to
music by Sajid-Wajid. Although the Qawwali influences might have been good in a small
dose, its repetitive nature leaves the soundtrack lacking the punch and recall value of
Habib Faisal's earlier films.
Although there are glimpses of Faisal's trademark humour like the scene where there is a
sudden brake in Gullu and Amju's (TV star Karan Wahi's big screen debut) burgeoning
romance as he mentions that he is a vegetarian and Parineeti's kebab and nihari-eating
character pales, putting her halim before her heart, similarly the nikaah setpiece in front
of the Haider restaurant's focuses on the neon board displaying kakoris as much as the
resplendent bride and groom, these are few and far in between. Most plot points are put
together, complicated and resolved for no particular reason or logic. Daawat-e-Ishq is
like that culinary potpourri that just went wrong due to a whole bunch of too many wrong
ingredients put together.
It would be better advised to spend your time indulging in a real daawat of biryani and
kebab rather than indulging in this forgettable fare.
This was published in the New Indian Express, Bangalore on 20 September 2014
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