Dil Bole Hadippa

Yet another release from Yash Raj Films, Dil Bole Hadippa is a sporty-romantic tale starring Shahid Kapoor and Rani Mukherji. The Anurag Singh directed movie has a lot of hype and expectations surrounding it. Sharing the screen space for the first time, do Shahid and Rani create onscreen magic?
Dil Bole Hadippa is about a lively vivacious girl Veera (Rani Mukherjee), who has immense passion for cricket and dreams of playing it big someday with Tendulkar and Dhoni for India. Since India has been losing the Aaman Cup for 8 consecutive years to Pakistan, Vicky (Anupam Kher) handover the captaincy to son Rohan. Rohan (Shahid Kapoor), an accomplished captain of a county cricket team in England, makes a new team to take India to victory. Veera finally finds a getaway for her dreams and puts up the disguise of a man, Veer Pratap Singh, and earns herself a place in Rohan's team. What follows is a twisty - tricky tale of romance, passion and comedy between Veera, Rohan and Veer (disguise).
Dil Bole Hadippa is a confused tale - with passion for cricket as its main backdrop, it blends in patriotism, romance, jealousy and many more varied emotions. Apart from the several loose ends in the script, DBH lacks excitement much like Rani's Tara Rum Pum.
The first half of the movie is slow paced, but does have a moment or two worth of chuckles and a sizzling item number by Rakhi Sawant. Post interval the movie takes a romantic angle but before you could even realize, it completely takes up cricket and patriotism. Climax is just another run-of-a-mill kind but Veera's speech about allowing girls to dream is touching.
Music by Pritam is very Punjabi and enjoyable. Shahid and Rani share sweet chemistry, as a couple they are very likeable. But the romantic portion in the movie isn't convincing enough. Cheesy dialogues just to prove one's desi-pan gets annoying. Sherlyn Chopra and Rakhi Sawant in limited roles, indulge in skin-show.
Finally, what makes DBH worth a watch is Rani Mukherji. The pretty actress has lost loads of weight and appears briefly in a bikini top in the title track as the credits roll. To her credit, she makes the two characters feel distinctly different and puts across a very lovable performance. Shahid Kapoor has limited scope, but his performance grows on you towards the end of the second half. Anupam Kher and Dalip Tahil were good in their respective roles.