Tanu Weds Manu Returns: Kangana vs Kangana. It's Complicated.

Four years ago in Tanu Weds Manu, Tanu won your heart over with her bad girl image and drinking and schmoozing ways. This year Datto will vie as much for your heart with her endearing tomboy innocence, Haryanvi accent and her smashing knockouts handed to anyone who dares misbehave. It’s a tough competition between Tanu and Datto. Or Kangana vs Kangana. How on earth will second time groom, Manu (Madhavan) choose? Plus there is the gun happy, sexy ex boyfriend, Raja Awashti (Deliciously rakish Jimmy Shergill). To top that, there is a new admirer, Chintu (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) smitten with Tanu-the best part of the sequel - Tanu Weds Manu Returns.

It’s all crazy and complicated. So is the impossibly contrived, over the top plot with some good scenes and dialogues which play high and fast to the gallery.

Director Anand Rai, along with a writer, extremely gifted with wit and humour - Himanshu Sharma are experts at creating characters madly and hopelessly in love. Raanjhanaa had Dhanush ,the deewana of Benaras happy to die in Sonam’s arms. Now, in TWMR, there are several of the loony in love characters.

The most dramatic, of course is Tanu. She is seen, a long jacket wrapped around her slim frame, roaming the streets of Kanpur, in the dead of night, a glass of liquor in her hand, lost in the old strains by Geeta Dutt… “ja ja ja bewafaa…” Guru Dutt was definitly smiling from up above, at this haunting tribute.

Then there is Datto, the wisp of an athlete who puts up such a brave fight against her village family rooted in caste beliefs, that you can’t help falling for her, just like Manu. Little wonder, he barely notices the kerosene brought in to burn him alive.

Apparently, Manu’s wedding is never short of death defying adventure. If he almost got shot down during his first wedding in the Tanu Weds Manu, his life is at stake yet again. Not just that, ex-wife (it doesn’t take long on screen for divorces to come through), Tanu, makes sure she dances at his wedding while he watches from atop a ghodi. When Tanu dances here or at a strangers wedding, the fierce rage and anguish in her jhatkas and matkas are enough to win Kangana more admirers and fans.

But another contender for applause is not far behind. When Datto gives a self defiant speech in Haryanvi, fighting for herself respect and says she is an athlete who gets admission in a Delhi college on her own merit and can earn her own living unlike Tanu, writer Himanshu Sharma, has a clear winner. More so, when Kangana sounds like a real Haryanvi. Her fiery spirit, boy cut and big teeth (kudos her stylist)  prove to be tough competition for Tanu’s mad moods, pretty bangles, jhumkas and seductive curls.

Tanu is the proverbial wife who can drive a husband really mad. So mad that he actually lands up in an asylum in London. She thinks nothing of taking off for Kanpur and calling his best friend, Pappy ( Deepak Dobriyal) to come and rescue Manu, more as an afterthought. Once home, she is out to  shock and scandalize and break anyone’s wedding plans in the family. Even if she has to come out in a towel and greet the guests and tell the hapless bride to be to find more adventure in running away, with or without a boyfriend. She herself plans to have an affair and seeks out old flame who she calls Awasthiji.

But there is a twist in the tale, a hilarious blast from the past and TWMR gets wickedly funny at interval point. All hell sets loose but so loose that the director cannot gather it back with conviction.

The film has everything unbelievable, going for it, be it the way Tanu and Manu break up or the way a quick second wedding plans begin for Manu. The ending too has an easy copout.

But the film charms and engages with its insane people riding the streets of Kanpur. There is even a hilarious tug of war between Awasthi and Chintu  with Tanu on the scooter seat. The  art department is visibly efficient all throughout in overcrowded terraced houses and peeling of pea pods by a male family member (Rajendra Gupta). Incidentally, Gupta is Manu’s father who gives a long gyaan on marriage to a running background sound of his wife yelling and nagging. The scene ends with a classic blackout: a solution to marital fights.

The supporting cast is a riot. Swara Bhaskar with a baby related secret, Eijaaz Khan as the Sardar doing dandiya, Zeeshan as the shameless (non) paying guest lawyer and Deepak Dobriyal who squeals out every funny line ,and above all, the gunda charmer who Jimmy Shergill plays suitably subdued with flashes of past behavior. It’s not an easy task to make your presence felt amongst these colourful and talented lot falling over each other to outshine the dynamite packed in wispy Kangana; but Madhavan with his quiet, shy smiles and occasional outbursts, stands his own, comfortable in his 80 kilos presence.

Despite all its mad and hurried, rather unreal wedding drama, Tanu Weds Manu Returns is an entertaining, crazy ride in a double decker with  Kangana as bonus. The queen rocks as drama queen.

With a Geeta Dutt song to boot, who needs band baaja?

(The writer tries to make peace with her own filmmaking nightmares, of being a scriptwriter, actor and assisting film icons by moonlighting as a film journalist.http://gayatrigauri.blogspot.in)