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Some of the writing
invested into this not-bad comic look at the
roller-coaster called marriage is surprisingly
sharp.
For example, there's this Gujarati family lorded
over by a tycoon (Darshan Jariwala) in Cape Town
who remains rigidly rooted to conventions that
ended 50 years ago. Back home in Gujarat a
modern business family run by a liberal
patriarch (Vikram Gokhale) ends up giving his
daughter (Prachi Desai) to the NRI tycoon's
mousy son (Tusshar Kapoor). The conflict that
ensues is likeable and in a fully filmy way,
believable.
Elsewhere this spoilt rich girl (Genelia)
with a father (Anupam Kher), who never bothered
to discipline her, gets herself a domesticated
husband who does all the work while she attends
to various disastrous hobbies.
Genelia as the destructive daughter gets to sink
her teeth into a meaty part.
Witty and sometimes genuinely funny, "Life
Partner" is a light bubbly take on the pitfalls
of various kinds of marriages, arranged or
otherwise, and how to avoid perils of getting
into a marital alliance where the partners know
nothing about the future.
While Genelia is happily over-the-top, Prachi in
the rounded sensible part of a Gujarati girl
standing up to her autocratic father-in-law does
well for herself. Of the two young leading men,
Tusshar as the timid believer in virginity as a
gift to his bride suits his part and does at
least one sequence when he bursts into tears
after Prachi accepts his proposal with tonal
correctness.
But it is Govinda as the frazzled divorce lawyer
who brings the house down. Govinda gives the
kind of tongue-in-cheek performance that once
made him the number one choice for roles that
required comic interpretations of social
problems. He works well in combination with
every actor in this film, wooden or hammy.
Rumi Jaffrey's direction is most of the time
even in tone. But the last half hour with its
screeching sermonizing gets on to slippery
ground. Nonetheless "Life Partner" is a decent
inoffensive marital comedy mostly free of
double-meanings. |
