Dostana - Movie Review
Published: January 26, 2010
Starring Abhishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, John Abraham, Bobby Deol
Mumbai crash-lands in Miami, and voilà, Bollywood meets The Birdcage. The two go together like sun and sand. The reason it didn’t happen sooner is because same-sex romance was a taboo movie topic in India—until Dostana came along. The film isn’t preachy about tolerance, but rather, a rollicking good time, right from the get-go. Maybe that’s why audiences embraced the theme despite its touchiness and turned out in droves.
The film opens with Bollywood’s favorite eye candy, John Abraham, emerging from the ocean Ursula Andress-style—a shimmering Adonis in tight swim trunks. Hero No. 2, Abhishek Bachchan, pulls up in a pink fishtail Cadillac with a bevy of babes in the back seat. And a bikini-clad Shilpa Shetty performs the catchy number “Shut Up and Bounce” along Miami’s South Beach, cavorting with the two men. But wait—isn’t the movie about a gay relationship? No, but it is about acceptance of gay relationships, done in the spirit of La Cage Aux Folles. Instead of two gay men pretending to be a straight couple, two straight men pretend to be a gay couple.
The film firmly establishes that the main characters, Sameer (Bachchan) and Kunal (Abraham), like women—a lot. They’re macho lady-killers who meet one morning over breakfast after shacking up with two girls who live together. Kunal is a fashion photographer who has access to gorgeous women galore, while Sameer is a nurse who’s secure enough in his masculinity to comfortably work in a female-dominated field. They run into each other again when they both show up to rent the same apartment, and both are turned down by the landlady, who doesn’t want virile young men as tenants, since they’ll be sharing the place with her niece, Neha (Priyanka Chopra). They don’t want to pass up the chance to live in this incredible pad, so they tell the landlady they’re gay and she decides to make an exception for them. The problems begin when they meet Neha and they’re immediately hot for her, but they can’t reveal the truth to her or she’ll throw them out.
The three become close friends as they hit the beaches and clubs of Miami. The comical complications pile up when Sameer’s mother, who’s unaware of her son’s ruse, shows up for a visit, along with an immigration officer, who’s checking to make sure their relationship is legitimate since they applied for permanent residency as a same-sex couple. When Neha starts dating her boss, Abhi (Bobby Deol), Sameer and Kunal—now completely in love with her—do everything they can to break them up, with hilarious results. Of course, only one of these three men can have her, and all of their friendships end up on the line.
Dostana is rated Must See.
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