Dil Bole Hadippa's plot is loosley based on the 2006 American high school comedy She's the Man starring Amanda Bynes as Viola Hastings, the film was a reworking of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
Viola Hastings and Veera Kaur
In She's the Man Viola Hastings joins the boys football team pretending to be her brother. In the Bollywood version we see Veera Kaur (Rani Mukerjee) joining the village cricket team also pretending to be her brother, except in this film Veera doesn't actually have a sibling.
There are also other similarities in the storyline. Viola Hastings ends up spending quite a lot of time with the star striker of the team and eventually falls in love with him. In Dil Bole Hadippa Rani Mukerjee falls for the team captain played by Bollywoods latest heart throb Shahid Kapur.
Yash Chopra Formula is Predictable and Boring
She's the Man worked because it's screenplay stayed true to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about Dil Bole Hadippa. The Punjabi setting revolving around a family running a village Theatre and the theme of Indo-Pak relations should have given the writers enough material to put together a interesting screenplay. Problem is instead of drawing more from the original material; Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, the writers decide to bring in the often repeated Yash Chopra formula, with patriotic songs, cheesy dialogues and a melodramatic soap opera style screenplay that makes every scene predictable and boring.
The focus of the film also gets lost in the formula. It starts of with a feminist angle, showing a girl who has ambitions to play for the national cricket team, then suddenly about thirty minutes into the movie it becomes a love story.
However the film isn't all bad and it has some laugh out loud moments. Keep an eye out for the shower scene and the moment when Shahid Kapur's character confesses his love for Veera to Veer - not knowing that Veer is actually Veera. Rani Mukerjee as Veera and Veer brings a lot of energy to the role and is especially brilliant as Veer.
This is a Yash Raj production and it has enough comedy value with some good songs to sustain a family audience. The film should have a good run at the box office. Also the film stars Shahid Kapur who has been a dependable star with all his recent films doing well. His last film Kaminey was fantastic and has so far earn't in excess of 40 crores.
