Zee Studios, Dharma Productions and Cloud 9 Pictures’ Dhadak 2 (UA) is the second in the Dhadak series. The film is about caste differences. A lower caste boy falls in love with an upper caste girl. How the girl’s family members make the boy’s life hell is the crux of the story.
The film is based on Tamil film Pariyerum Perumal. Neelesh (Siddhant Chaturvedi) gets admission in the prestigious law college under the quota category, but the caste-conscious students never let him forget for even a moment that he belongs to a lower caste. Vidhi (Tripti Dimri), an upper caste girl, studies in the same class. Slowly but surely, Neelesh and Vidhi fall in love with one another. However, all hell breaks loose when Vidhi’s family gets to know of the love affair. What happens finally?
Rahul Badwelkar and Shazia Iqbal’s adapted story is quite interesting but it is also long-winding. Secondly, a story about casteism may not appeal much to the city-bred viewers. The duo’s screenplay, with additional screenplay by Bikas Ranjan Mishra, is good in parts. It gets boring and tedious at times. The biggest drawback of the drama is that the writers have given more importance to the casteist angle and not to the romantic angle. Another drawback is that there are too many tracks which move concurrently — of students who bully Neelesh because of his lower caste, of student unrest on the college campus, of Neelesh’s personal demons, of the love story between Neelesh and Vidhi, of the tension in Vidhi’s family, etc. The writers have not been able to handle the multiple tracks with the maturity that was required. The climax is comparatively tame in relation to the build-up of the drama. Rahul Badwelkar and Shazia Iqbal’s dialogues should’ve also been firebrand instead of just being emotional.
Siddhant Chaturvedi does a wonderful job as the lower caste Neelesh. He portrays his angst and his helplessness very ably. However, he should’ve been given a more weighty climax to balance the rest of the drama. Tripti Dimri plays Vidhi with a lot of maturity. She is very good in the dramatic and melodramatic scenes. Saurabh Sachdeva stands out with a fine performance as Shankar. Zakir Hussain makes a beautiful mark as college principal Haider Ansari. Distinction marks to him for a wonderful show! Anubha Fatehpuria is natural to the core as Neelesh’s mother. Vipin Sharma is excellent in a brief role as Neelesh’s father. Saad Bilgrami is superb in the role of Raunaq alias Ronnie. He looks handsome and acts with aplomb. Aditya Thakare is first-rate as Vasu. Priyank Tiwari makes his presence amply felt as Shekhar. Manjiri Pupala is effective as Richa. Harish Khanna is natural to the core as Vidhi’s father, Arvind Bhardwaj. Deeksha Joshi has her moments as Vidhi’s sister, Nimisha. Abhay Joshi leaves a mark as Vidhi’s paternal uncle, Prakash. Balendra Singh leaves a nice impression as Prof. Tripathi. Sanjay Mehta makes a good mark in a tiny role as Neelesh’s fake father, Babu Bhaiya. Mayank Khanna (as Bhim), Shantanu Pandey (as Bala), Ashwant Lodhi (as Sachin), Shantanu Shukla (as Vijay), Yash Tiwari (as Sunny), Maithili Jha (as Pooja), Tapasya Tiwari (as Vidhi’s aunt), Rajendra Parsendiya (as the professor), and the others lend adequate support.
Shazia Iqbal’s direction is fairly nice but the film looks a bit too scattered because of the several tracks. Also, she has concentrated too much on the caste differences rather than on the love story — and that’s the biggest weakness of the film. Music is a major plus point of the film. The Bawaria song (composed by Tanishk Bagchi, penned by Ozil Dalal) is a hit number. The Preet re and Ye kaisa ishq songs (composed by Rochak Kohli, written by Gurpreet Saini) are also very melodious. Bas ek dhadak and Tu meri dhadak hai (both set to tune by Javed-Mohsin, lyrics by Rashmi Virag) and Duniya alag (composed by Shreyas Puranik, written by Siddharth-Garima) are also tuneful and soulful numbers. Song picturisations (Bawaria by Caesar-Gonsalves; Preet re and Bas ek dhadak by Tushar Kalia; Launda nach by Rakesh Kumar) are quite nice. Tanuj Tiku’s background music is good but should’ve been more compelling. Sylvester Fonseca’s cinematography is very nice. Amrit Singh’s action choreography, with additional action choreography by Vikram Dahiya, affords thrill to the viewers. Suman Roy Mahapatra’s production designing is very realistic. Omkar Uttam Sakpal and Sangeet Verghese’s editing ought to have been sharper.
On the whole, Dhadak 2 is too ordinary a fare to shine at the box-office. Although the music and performances of the main artistes are very good, it will not be able to score at the ticket windows.
Releasedon 1-8-’25 at Inox (daily 5 shows) and other cinemas of Bombay by Zee Studios. Publicity: very good. Opening: very ordinary. …….Also released all over. Opening was alright at places but below the mark at others.