Movie Review: Daawat-E-Ishq | Didn’t hurt, Watch it once

Daawat-e-ishq deals with the issue of dowry. Abdul Qadir (Anupam Kher) is a court clerk with a meagre salary of Rs 30,000 a month. He can’t get her daughter Gulrez (Parineeti Chopra) married as he can’t fulfill the demands of her greedy suitors and their families. Hence the father-daughter duo decides to turn tables around by taping and trapping the greediest suitor under the IPC section of 498A and extorting money

The plot of the film is as half-baked and unconvincing as its treatment. Long queues of suitors at a hotel in Lucknow, the unabashed  demands of greedy families, the whole camera set up for a sting operation and the fact that ladka-ladki should spend three days together to know each other and give the viewers a free hop-on hop-off Lucknow darshan in Tariq’s red Impala look too forced and feeble.

The direction by Habib Faisal is as inconsistent as its characters who are happy, upset, angry, melodramatic and romantic all in a span of a few minutes. Abdul Qadri is shown shaking like a leaf facing corruption at work and the same Qadri executes a well-planned con job. Tariq (Adity Roy Kapur) is raging with anger and wants to teach Gulrez a lesson, except he cools down in a jiffy and calmly listens to her sob sob I-was-insulted-by-dowry-mongers-and-hence-left-with-no-choice story. Such sudden change? Even Mumbai rains are more predictable guys!

The daawat bit of the movie is only confined to Tariq’s kitchen. The food by no means is instrumental in furthering the plot or bringing any drastic change in the story. Tariq could have been a mechanic, a watchman or a wrestler. It wouldn’t have mattered.

Gulrez’s love interest, Tariq is no less. He redefines misogyny as he tells Gulrez he would never have a problem even if she puts on weight after marriage. Wow so generous! Such magnanimity broke my heart! She should have pounced on him and married him right then. He is a cook, will feed her fat and will have no problem with her weight. What a forward thinking, liberal catch he is!! (Though he redeems himself by asking her if she would have a problem if he develops a paunch.)

Dowry by no means should mean humiliation to women or their families. To use that humiliation to con someone can never be justified. And to show such characters as heroes on the big screen is downright regressive.