Merry Christmas Trailer Review
Rating: *** ½
There is something inherently quaint and endearing about two accents colliding during the merriment of Christmas in Mumbai.
Director Sriram Raghavan loves pitching polarized protagonists against one another, like Tabu and Anil Dhawan in Andhadhun, or for that matter Varun Dhawan and Huma Qureshi in Badlapur. In the splendidly dizzying Merry Christmas it is Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi who are as alike as Shabana Azmi and Rajesh Khanna(who did several successful films together).
Vijay doesn’t hide or gloss over his thick Tamil accent. Katrina’s anglicized Hindi is as part of her screen image as Hema Malini’s Tamil accent. Their stardom was never affected by their accented Hindi, so why should they change?
Brilliant deviser that he is, Sriram Raghavan plays around with the two accents almost like two parallel characters to the protagonists.
Kaif and Sethupathi ,one chalk the other cheese, meet and collude on Christmas night. Movie tickets play a big part in the trailer. One of them has Rajesh Khanna’s face on the back and the message, “The night is the darkest before dawn.”
Did the father of all superstars Rajesh Khanna actually say that line in any of his films? I don’t really recall. I also don’t know what it means when Vijay says, “Sometimes violence is better than sacrifice.”
But hell, it SOUNDS right. And that’s what counts. The trailer is taut and coiled. It is not quite as intriguing or sexy as Andhadhun.Sexy, I am sorry to say, is not quite the description that comes to mind while watching these two strangers walking talking and, well, rocking into the night while Santa exposes his claws.
The trailer ends with the best line heard on screen since ‘Babumoshai , zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahin.’
In the trailer of Merry Christmas,we get this instant classic for generations of moviegoers: “Check your longings before leaving cinema.”
Will do that,thanks .
