‘Rocky Aur Rani’ Review: Karan Johar’s Funniest, Joyful and Most Political Film In A While

Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (U/A)

Cast: Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Dharmendra, Shabana Azmi, Jaya Bachchan, Aamir Bashir, Tota Roy Chowdhury, Churni Ganguly, Kshitee Jog, Anjali Anand

Direction: Karan Johar

Rating: ***1/2

Showing in theaters.

I was quite certain that I was going to hate Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. Apart from my irritation at the numerically-protected title, the film’s trailer looked like Karan Johar had decided to relocate his brand of parivarik melodrama about papaji, mummyji, biji-baoji to the sets of Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

Everything looked grand but Malhotra. As if we were in the company of Punjabi baraatis attending a Mugaliya Saltanat nikaah. 

And when the film began, all the expected tropes came trotting out. The big bungalow, the stern and scowling patriarch, the crorepati waaris on one side, and on the other the quieter, cultured but pretentious Bengalis. 

Yet Rocky Aur Rani scooped me up and carried me along with its funny jokes, melodrama and subversive gender politics. 

Rocky Aur Rani is Karan Johar’s funniest and most joyful film. And after My Name Is Khan, his most political one.  

True to Karan Johar’s style, everything in Rocky Aur Rani is over-the-top — the decor, the costumes, the drama, the dance sequences, the confrontations and cars. The story isn’t original either, but the screenplay cleverly serves Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Khubsoorat (1980) and Abhishek Verman’s 2 States with a twist and in designer bling. 

The film is about the prem kahani of a Punjabi boy and a Bengali girl who are very different culturally, politically, financially, historically and temperamentally. But woven in their story is the story of everyone deserving love and respect despite differences of gender, sexuality, culture, body sizes and age. 

The film challenges stifling stereotypes, gender expectations and prejudices. It questions patriarchal bade-buzurg who control the lives of others not out of love, but because they love their power. And in a moment so dramatic and fabulous, Rocky Aur Rani shatters a taboo so brilliantly that even now my tears won’t stop rolling.

Big Bollywood and our dreams have a symbiotic relationship. This perfect, gorgeous, world of papaji and jhappiyan, of mummyji and shadiyan, of pyaar and izzat, sanskar and ahankar is born out of our own familial complexes and fantasies. But it’s also a world that embellishes our dreams and controls not just how we want to see ourselves, but also how we want to be seen, how we want to live and be loved.

Rocky Aur Rani has all the childish silliness and delusions of that dream world. Yet the film is special because it does what the best of Bollywood does — toote hue dilon ko jodne ka kaam.

Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani is set in Delhi where, in a palatial white bungalow called Randhawa Paradise, lives a Punjabi family. Every morning they do aarti to thank Mata Rani for their flourishing Boondi Laddoo business. The business and the house are controlled by dadi Dhanalakshmi (Jaya Bachchan) and her son, Tijori (Aamir Bashir). 

Dhanlakshmi’s husband, Kanwal Bauji (Dharmendra), was once a man more interested in sher-o-shayari than tallying accounting figures. But an accident left him paralyzed and now he is a silent relic in a wheelchair. 

As per Randhava’s parampara, Dhanalakshmi runs her parivaar with a disapproving scowl and diktats. But at a party one day, where Rocky (Ranveer Singh) is dancing with four nepo-kids, Bauji suddenly starts muttering “Jamini, Jamini”, and proceeds in his wheelchair to cause some social embarrassment.

Dadi frowns, Tijori frowns in solidarity but Rocky discovers a phool and a photo in Bauji’s poetry ki kitab which leads him to Rani Chatterjee (Alia Bhatt).

A saree-draped, sexy Bengali celebrity anchor, in the first scene itself Rani establishes her feminist credentials by delivering a woke lecture on air.

She lives with her Thakur ma (Shabana Azmi), an English professor mummyji who talks like Shashi Tharoor’s badi behen, and a kathak dancer dad. She also has a pesky tag-along Soumen (Namit Das) who has ingratiating plans.  

When Rocky comes to meet Rani in his red Ferrari, sipping a post-workout protein shake and thinking West Bengal is in the West, it’s a merry clash of civilizations. 

But a story about a life-altering holiday in Shimla in 1978 gives them both a project they need to collaborate on. Several rounds of double dates follow where Johar seduces us with romance conducted around bhule bisre geet and a very funny moment with “buddhon ka Emraan Hashmi.”

Things go as planned till they don’t. There is some jhagarna-bicharna and then a swap.

The well-preserved, traditional prejudices of Punjabis and Bengalis that have been honed for generations are now all out in the open. All show them off and poke fun at the other, sometimes funnily, but sometimes in ways that hurt and make them all teary.

The Bengalis, with their Tagore portrait, Rabindra Sangeet and cultural get-togethers, sit cross-legged sipping wine. And in between sharing shotti kathas, talk airily about their Punjabi houseguest.

In the Randhawa mansion, Rani is shown her aukat again and again, and then the aukat of women in general, except Dhanalakshmi, of course. 

At the bhadralok’s classy baari, Rocky learns to get comfortable around bras, teaches them the importance of pappiyan-jhappiyan and generally tries to lower their pretentious quotient.

Rani, meanwhile, begins to engineer small kitchen revolutions. 

But Dhanalakshmi, played by Jaya Bachchan, creates moments of epic kalesh with the meanness that makes it stand out.

But after tears, comes joy. And a lot of credit for that goes to Ishita Moitra’s dialogue which uses the peculiarities of Punjabis and Bengalis to superb effect.

Sometimes it’s Rocky’s sister whose vocabulary is like an ashleel auto-correct that turns intercaste into intercourse, but mostly it’s Rocky’s “Means ke?” “Are you takaoing?” and, of course, the Punjabi motto, “Family pe mat ja.”

Rocky Aur Rani’s writers and director give the film so many taaliyan-bajana and tassue-bahana moments that despite its ass-numbing length of 168 minutes, I was hooked.

Rocky Aur Rani has a nice, talented cast, and I especially liked Churni Ganguly who plays Rani’s mother. But Dharam paaji and Ranveer Singh are the heart and soul of the film. They create moments of such heightened joy and emotions that I was smiling while crying bilak-bilak ke.

Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt warm up to each other in the course of the film and develop chemistry that grows on you. They share some nice-nice kissiyan, including one in upside-down Spider-Man style.

Alia Bhatt is lovely, but her key job as Rani is to soften Rocky’s Punjabi onslaught. 

Rocky’s wardrobe deserves a review of its own. It’s all Versace, Fendi, and thick gold chains dangling not just on his shaved, bronzed, gym-toned torso, but also on his colored suedes. 

If I were to give his brand of haute couture a name, I’d call it Hadasa Couture. Each ensemble is like a mishap, a roadkill in bling.

This wardrobe isn’t just an extension of Rocky’s loud, Punjabi personality, but the two seem to be contestants in a competition of garish. And Ranveer Singh repeatedly outdoes the crazy hysteria of his attire.

But Singh is an excellent actor. And in between all this craziness, where his clothes seem to be dragging him to dance on stage at a Daler Mehndi concert, he is able to pause the film to create moments of such high emotions and intensity that even his lime green, mirror-wala achkan seemed to be looking for a hanky.  

Rocky Aur Rani has terrible songs, but its politics is fab.

Apart from challenging cancel culture, gender roles and calling out body shaming, the film even questions that thing on which the entire Karan Johar enterprise rests — desi obsession with ladki ki shaadi. And what I liked the most about Rocky Aur Rani is that in the end, the film didn’t feel the need for a happy family photo. It seemed to say that sometimes, when your loved ones don’t get you and won’t be with you, it’s okay to let go. 

There’s respect for the other in that, and a lot of self-love.