What's Your Raashee?

TIFF: With Jodhaa Akbar and the Academy Award-nominated Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India under his belt, Ashutosh Gowariker is justly celebrated for his lush period epics. Even his contemporary film Swades: We, the People had a soaring, serious dramatic bent. Who knew he'd been waiting for the right moment to leap into romantic comedy?

And who knew he'd do it so beautifully? Light, sparkling and sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious, What's Your Raashee? stars Harman Baweja and the stellar Priyanka Chopra in a colourful confection of a love story. Baweja is Yogesh Patel, a young man whose romantic ideals jut up against reality when he's forced to find a bride in twelve days or risk causing his family's downfall. Putting a plan in place, he decides on twelve dates with twelve women. Each woman will be born under a different astrological sign, or raashee. That's the clever conceit of the plot, drawn from Madhu Rye's novel Kimball Ravenswood. Gowariker's own brilliant conceit is to cast Chopra as each of the twelve women.

Having starred in a wide range of popular hits – including two of India's biggest action films – this former Miss World possesses a physical intelligence onscreen that is a marvel to watch. With each character, she adopts not just a different look but a different way of inhabiting her body: the awkward geek girl hunched over her beverage; the severe career woman who submits Yogesh to a clinical inspection; or the traditionallooking shy girl who's secretly more adventurous than she appears. Chopra even plays both a college-aged gum snapper and a high-school ingenue equally convincingly.

Clearly having a ball with the different characters, styles and costumes, Chopra throws herself into the roles, with Baweja ably playing her comic foil. And Gowariker, an admitted fan of both Hollywood's Roman Holiday and classic Bollywood comedy Chupke Chupke, hits all the right notes of fun, glamour and hot romance on the way to the satisfying conclusion.

Ashutosh Gowariker was born in Maharashtra, India, and began his film career as an actor. As a director, his feature films include Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (01), which was nominated for best foreign-language film at the Academy Awards® in 2002, Swades: We, the People (04), Jodhaa Akbar (08) and What's Your Raashee? (09).
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Jason Anderson, Toronto Star: To be delivered in the most seductive manner possible, the title of the latest Bollywood release to hit Toronto theatres is a Hindi variation on that time-tested pickup line, "What's your sign?"

However, the hero of What's Your Raashee? is not that kind of sleaze-bag, despite the fact that his attempt to find Miss Right on the eve of his arranged wedding requires poor Yogesh (Harman Baweja) to date 12 women, each representing a different sign of the Zodiac.

Each woman is played by Priyanka Chopra, a former model and, as she proves here, a formidable comedienne. Chopra's multi-faceted performance is the most appealing element in this likeable but inevitably exhausting romcom whose 3 1/2-hour running time is excessive even by Bollywood's standards.

As such, Ashutosh Gowarikar's film is unlikely to introduce many new viewers to the pleasures of Indian cinema, despite its recent world premiere at TIFF and its relatively wide release in the GTA.

However, there is some fun here thanks to Chopra, a few inventive production numbers and some slyly satirical observations about courtship rituals, whether they be traditional or contemporary.

A handsome MBA grad starting his career in Chicago, Yogesh is both a paragon and a paradox. While he initially submits to his family's marriage plans only because it may save them from financial ruin, he also believes that a match's viability can be judged in a single meeting.

It's a given that he'll end up with Chopra, though in which of her many guises? How well the qualities of her characters correspond with their respective signs (e.g., a sexy would-be model for Scorpio, a loopy heiress for Taurus) can only be assessed by astrologers in the audience, but the fun she has playing them is infectious. Baweja is more wooden in comparison but he brings the necessary verve to the best dance scenes.

In fact, What's Your Raashee? sags and drags less than it ought to. But it's destined to outstay its welcome with most viewers.