Tag Archives: Archana Puran Singh

Movie Review: Nadaaniyan (2025)

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1 Star (out of 4)

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Producer Karan Johar serves up fresh talent in the stalest of offerings — the youthful romantic comedy Nadaaniyan (“Innocence“).

Sridevi’s youngest daughter Khushi Kapoor plays rich girl Pia Jaisingh, who’s in a rough spot as she starts her senior year at an elite Delhi boarding school. Her friends Sahira (Aaliyah Qureishi) and Rhea (Apoorva Makhija) are mad at her for ignoring them all summer and failing to disclose that Sahira’s crush Ayaan (Dev Agasteya) was sending flirty text messages. Pia’s solution? Invent a fake boyfriend.

Thankfully, hunky Arjun Mehta (Ibrahim Ali Khan, son of Saif Ali Khan) just transferred to the school. His dad Sanjay (Jugal Hansraj) is a doctor, and his mom Nandini (Dia Mirza) teaches at the school, making him essentially destitute, compared to his well-heeled classmates. Arjun agrees to pose as Pia’s boyfriend in exchange for money.

If this sounds like a knock-off version of Johar’s 2012 directorial Student of the Year — another star-kid launch vehicle — that’s because it mostly is. More accurately, Nadaaniyan feels cobbled together from material deemed not good enough for SOTY, left rotting on a shelf for more than a decade. For example, the school’s principal Mrs. Braganza Malhotra (Archana Puran Singh, reviving her character from 1998’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) comically misuses youthful slang, mistaking “LOL” as meaning “lots of love.” Arjun’s big plan to get rich after he spends a half-dozen years in law school and interning is to build an app.

It’s not just that the material feels dated. It feels like it was stitched together without a care for continuity or world-building. Arjun plans to get a college athletic scholarship for swimming, but we never see him compete as a swimmer. The whole plot revolves around his debate team captaincy. Does the school even have a swim team?

The only reason Arjun’s athleticism is even mentioned is as an excuse for Khan to show his abs, which is how he becomes debate team captain (no, I’m not joking). Focusing on Khan’s and Kapoor’s physiques isn’t in itself problematic, since they’re both twenty-four, but they are playing teenagers. The camera ogles both of them in swimwear in a scene that comes before Pia’s eighteenth birthday party. If they had been written as college students, it wouldn’t feel as gross.

Of course, Arjun’s fake relationship with Pia turns into something real, especially as he builds her confidence and encourages her to dream bigger than the stereotypical girl careers like fashion that her family is pushing for. Pia’s dysfunctional family includes mom Neelu (Mahima Chaudhry), dad Rajat (Suniel Shetty), and paternal grandfather Dhanraj (Barun Chanda). The Jaisingh men are salty that Neelu could never give them a son. Neelu beats herself up for it, Rajat cheats on her, and everyone makes Pia feel like nothing more than a pretty ornament. When tensions in the Jaisingh house finally boil over, it happens so explosively that it feels out of step with the frothy tone of the rest of the film.

With three films under her belt now, Kapoor still has much to learn, but she has potential. As in The Archies, she’s shown herself an attentive performer that plays well off of others. Khan’s future is less certain. He doesn’t feel fully engaged here, though director Shauna Gautam is also partially responsible for that. The weak screenplay by Riva Razdan Kapoor, Ishita Moitra, and Jehan Handa doesn’t give anyone much to work with.

The only people who come out of Nadaaniyan looking good are Mirza and Hansraj as Arjun’s parents. There’s a real tenderness in the way they deal with their angsty son and his friends. Too bad the movie wasn’t about them.

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Movie Review: De Dana Dan (2009)

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0.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Rather than a cohesive movie, De Dana Dan is a muddle of sideplots with no connecting thread. As a result, the talents of Bollywood’s comedy all-stars are squandered in an unsatisfying waste of two hours and forty-five minutes.

De Dana Dan gets off to a bad start for those of us who don’t understand Hindi, as Akshay Kumar’s opening narration isn’t subtitled in English. What I was able to work out is that Kumar’s character, Nitin, works as an a kind of indentured servant for the overbearing Kuljeet (Archana Puran Singh). Nitin’s buddy, Ram (Sunil Shetty), is likewise paying off debts by working as a delivery man.

Nitin’s girlfriend, Anjali (Katrina Kaif), and Ram’s girlfriend, Manpreet (Sameera Reddy), are sick of waiting for their guys to raise enough cash to marry them. So Nitin and Ram concoct a scheme to kidnap Kuljeet’s beloved dog and demand a ransom for his return. Of course, things don’t go as planned.

Meanwhile, a conman named Chadda (Paresh Rawal) tries to arrange a marriage between his son, Nonny (played by Chunky Pandey, who’s only 12 years younger than Rawal), and Anjali. Chadda plans to use her dowry money to pay off his debts. When Anjali lies to Nonny that she’s pregnant with someone else’s child, the conmen target Manpreet and her family instead.

The rest of the movie contains seemingly infinite cases of mistaken identity among the innumerable characters, some of whom — like Neha Dhupia’s dancer/thief — exist only to add to the confusion, not to further the plot. Granted, what passes for plot in De Dana Dan is little more than characters running, shouting, hiding from each other and falling on each other in compromising positions.

De Dana Dan is convoluted and irritating, rather than complex and interesting, and the final product is boring and empty. The romances between the penniless guys and their wealthy girlfriends feel hollow, since both couples are prepared to break up if the dog-napping scheme fails.

Paresh Rawal does his best as the movie’s lead actor (despite Kumar’s and Kaif’s prominence on the movie posters), but there’s ultimately no one to root for in this film.

The movie also contributes to a distressing trend I’ve written about before: the seeming acceptability of violence against women in Hindi cinema. Early in De Dana Dan, Anjali’s father slaps her hard enough to knock her over. Then he slaps her mother and threatens to break their legs if they defy him.

As the movie progresses, Anjali’s father assumes a supposedly comic role, accidentally groping a woman and chasing after the wrong guy. But how can the audience think him funny when he’s been established as an abusive husband and father?

I accept that physical punishment within families could be viewed differently in India than it is in The United States (although spanking your toddler and slapping your adult daughter’s face are on opposite ends of the corporal punishment spectrum). But I can’t imagine that abuse is so widely accepted that it’s considered funny.