Band Baaja Baaraat

Plot

Bittoo Sharma (Ranveer Singh) is street-smart and fun-loving. He gatecrashes a wedding for the free food, and Shruti Kakkar (Anushka Sharma), an intelligent and quirky girl who is assisting the wedding coordinator, confronts him. Bittoo pretends that he is part of the film crew and makes a video of Shruti's performance when he sees her dancing at the wedding. The next day, he tries to impress Shruti with a DVD he compiled of her dance at the wedding. Shruti is not interested in flirting and reveals that her main interest is starting her own business and becoming a wedding planner.

Bittoo is under pressure from his father to come back to the village and work on the family sugarcane fields; Shruti is being coaxed into getting married as soon as possible by her relatives. After her exams are over, Shruti makes a deal with her parents that she has five years to get her business up and running before they arrange a marriage for her. When Bittoo's father comes to take him back to his village, Bittoo lies that he cannot come back because he is starting a wedding planning business. He goes to Shruti with the idea of becoming her partner in her business, but she refuses because she is worried that a partnership might lead to a romantic complication between them. She tells Bittoo that the number one rule of business is not to let love get in the way.

Shruti, with Bittoo tagging along, goes to meet Chanda Narang, a famous wedding planner, in the hopes that Chanda will hire her. Chanda shows no interest in Shruti but loses one of her male workers at that very moment and offers Bittoo the job. Bittoo accepts on the condition that he and Shruti are hired together. On the job, Shruti learns quickly that Chanda has exceptionally bad work ethics, cheats her clients with elaborate speeches but delivers nothing according to their wishes. When a client confronts Chanda, she blames Shruti. Bittoo angrily defends Shruti and the two of them quit and walk out together. They form their own company, Shruti's original idea of Shaadi Mubaarak (Congratulations on the Wedding). The begin with small, low-budget projects and gradually work their way up. They finally get their first big client by stealing them away from Chanda. The wedding is a huge success and that night they celebrate, ending up drunk and then having sex. Afterwards, Bittoo lies awake all night, worried, since Shruti had warned against this.

Bittoo starts behaving awkwardly around her, while Shruti realizes she has fallen in love with him. Shruti tries to reassure Bitto that she's not like other girls he fools around with. Bittoo is relieved, but misunderstands her words, and believes that she's telling him their night of passion didn't mean anything to her as well. He is relieved and cites her own rule that love should not get in the way of business. Shruti pretends to agree with him, but is despondent and heartbroken. She consoles herself and tries to act normally, but her resentment for Bittoo keeps increasing. This creates a tense atmosphere, eventually leading to a huge fight after the wedding of one of their clients. Shruti breaks the partnership, forcing Bittoo to leave the company. Bittoo starts his own wedding planning business called "Happy Wedding". However, they both perform terribly by themselves and both end up suffering huge losses, plunging them into debt.

They finally get a big contract, but it is contingent upon them working together. Facing debt collectors, they agree to partner up again one final time for the sake of recovering their losses. They divvy up the workload, eventually falling back into their old rhythm. The next day, Bittoo tells Shruti that they should be partners again. Shruti refuses his offer, telling him that she is getting married to her fiance, Chetan, and will move to Dubai. Bittoo is stunned and pesters her during the rest of the wedding preparations, coming up with various excuses why she shouldn't marry Chetan. As a last resort, he accuses her of her wanting to getting married to exact revenge on him. Shruti angrily answers Bittoo that she is doing it for her parents and because Chetan is right for her, and admits that she did fall in love with him, but since he didn't feel the same, she has moved on.

Bittoo realizes that he has been in love with Shruti all along, but was too scared to acknowledge the feelings he had for her. Desperate to win her back, Bittoo calls Chetan, telling him to bugger off as he loves Shruti. Hearing this, Shruti angrily confronts Bittoo. He tells Shruti that he was an idiot to have run away from her love, but also playfully chides her, asking why she couldn't have taught him true love the way she taught him the ropes of the business world. Shruti calls Chetan and calls off her engagement to Chetan and Shruti and Bittoo, together at last, share a kiss.

The film ends with Shruti and Bittoo dancing at their own wedding with all the clientele, friends and family to the tune of "Ainvayi Ainvayi".

Cast

Casting

Actress Anushka Sharma was given the female lead in the film, thus completing the three-film contract she signed to do Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, her first film. Her role was described as "challenging" by media publications prior to the film's release. Describing the way the lead characters in the film talk as "crude but cute", the actress declared that the hardest part of her job was speaking like a typical Delhi Punjabi girl, which called for her to "talk fast, sometimes mix words and even omit words completely". Director Maneesh Sharma, with whom she's been great friends since her first film, said that the model-turned-actress was a very feisty person, and a natural actress who didn't like doing multiple takes. She described the film as "very much a young love story set in Delhi".

The male lead was given to Mumbai native Ranveer Singh, a complete newcomer with no prior acting or modelling experience whatsoever, who impressed producer Aditya Chopra so much that he cast him after his first audition, signing a three-film contract with the actor. Singh, who took acting classes, and hung out at Delhi University prior to shooting said about his casting "I’m the first solo hero Yash Raj is launching. It’s a huge deal for me. I don’t know how I got here. I guess I happened to be in the right place at the right time". As such, this marks the first time a film rests mainly on Anushka Sharma's shoulders, as opposed to her prior films Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Badmaash Company where she shared the screen with more experienced co-stars, respectively Shahrukh Khan and Shahid Kapoor, a fact the actress remarked upon, stating "some people will refer to Band Baaja Baraat as Anushka Sharma’s film because they have seen me in another film before".

Filming

Filming started in Delhi on 4 February 2010, the same day the production company announcement was made. Ranveer Singh was very nervous about his first day but was eventually proud that his first scene only took three takes to shoot. An 18 February article by Minakshi Saini for the Hindustan Times' entertainment supplement HT City reported that during the previous day's early morning shoot in West Delhi’s Subhash Nagar, Ranveer Singh's newcomer status led many to speculate on whether he was Ranbir Kapoor, Ranvir Shorey or even Ritesh Deshmukh. Police officers were eventually called in to secure the set from curious onlookers, however some expressed discontentment at having to be out in the cold despite both lead actors being virtual unknowns. The film features a kiss between the lead actors, which only necessitated a single take. Reportedly, Singh accidentally hit Sharma while filming an undisclosed intense scene. Other than Subhash Nagar DDA Market, locations in Delhi include Janakpuri, Delhi University, North and West Delhi, Ring Road, Mehrauli Farms and Akbar Road. Some scenes were also shot in director Maneesh Sharma's almamater, Hans Raj College in University campus. The film was additionally shot in Mumbai in March and Rajasthan in April.

The assistant directors for the film were Akshat Kapil and Rohit Philip who'd previously held the job on Aaja Nachle and Do Dooni Chaar respectively. Aseem Mishra handled the cinematography after working on such films as Contract, New York and Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai. The various dance sequences were choreographed by Vaibhavi Merchant, who has previously worked on countless films including such hits as Lagaan, Swades, Devdas and Veer-Zaara. Sonal Choudhry and T.P. Abid were the film's production designers while Niharika Khan was the costume designer.

Several rumours surrounded the film's shoot, such as speculation that the lead pair were more than just friends. Early media reports alternatively titled the film Shaadi Mubarak or Shaadi Mubarak Ho, however Yash Raj Films eventually issued a press release in late April claiming that this was not the film's title, and that film was actually still untitled. The title was eventually revealed to be Band Baaja Baaraat in late July.

Lead actors Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma got along well during the shoot, and are strongly believed to have dated and broken up before the film's release. Speaking about his co-star, Singh declared "She’s intelligent, well read and great to hang out with. Actually, she’s pretty close to my dream girl". Later he joked "She is the best co-star I have ever worked with! It's also because she is the only co-star I have ever worked with!".

Post-production

Namrata Rao edited the film.

Soundtrack

The score and songs of the film were composed by the duo Salim-Sulaiman who've composed music for many other Yash Raj Films productions before, including Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, which had already united actress Anushka Sharma with director Maneesh Sharma, who was then still an assistant director. The lyrics to the various songs were written by Amitabh Bhattacharya and playback singers include Sunidhi Chauhan, Benny Dayal, Shreya Ghoshal, Natalie Di Luccio, Himani Kapoor, Harshdeep Kaur, Labh Janjua, Shrraddha Pandit, Master Saleem, Sukhwinder Singh, Amitabh Bhattacharya and Salim Merchant.

The soundtrack was revealed on 19 October 2010, at the Yash Raj Studios in Andheri, Mumbai, and was commercially released on 3 November with a launch event happening at the Reliance TimeOut store in Bandra. The album consists of nine tracks, including two remixes and Yash Raj Films issued a press release giving a description of each track. They described the opening song Ainvayi Ainvayi as "a funky, energetic number", Tarkeebein as a "youthful song with cool lyrics", Aadha Ishq as a "perfect love ballad", Dum Dum as a "unique, unabashed item number with a Sufi-rock feel", Mitra as "cool and contemporary", Baari Barsi as a "superbly re-orchestrated" traditional Punjabi wedding song and Band Baaja Baaraat (Theme) as "a pulsating track which perfectly represents the spirit of the movie".

Reception

Critical reception for the soundtrack was generally average, leaning somewhat towards the positive, with everyone praising Ainvayi Ainvayi (with SawfNews even stating that one would "probably want to see the movie just for this song") and agreeing that the album was a superior effort than the composing duo's previous solo soundtrack for Teen Patti, while several criticised the track Dum Dum and lamented the similarity to previous Salim-Sulaiman scores. Writing for ApunKa Choice, Usha Lakra titled her review "Band, Baaja, Bland" and noted that while "the album has its moments" and "the tracks are composed strictly keeping in mind the theme of the movie", all-in-all Ainvayi Ainvayi was the only chartbuster of the album. Lakra listed Ainvayi Ainvayi, Aadha Ishq and Band Baaja Baaraat (Theme) as the album's best tracks. Prateeksha Khot of Bolly Spice only truly disliked Dum Dum and praised the "unconventional" lyrics by Amitabh Bhattacharya but felt the album failed "to live up to the expectation generated by the initial tracks" and criticised the similarities with previous Salim-Sulaiman efforts such as Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year and Aaja Nachle. The Economic Times writer Ruchika Kher gave a positive review, describing the album as a "fun-filled soundtrack" and noting the similarities between Tarkeebein and compositions by A. R. Rahman. Music Aloud also published a positive review, noting that while the soundtrack wasn't Salim-Sulaiman's best, it was still "a definite winner with some fantastic tracks". The reviewer however did dislike the song Dum Dum, and remarked that while Ainvayi Ainvayi resembled the song Dance Pe Chance from Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, it was "far more engaging". One of the album's most enthusiastic reviews was written by Joginder Tuteja for Bollywood Hungama. Tuteja described the music as "one of the better soundtracks that one has heard from the house of Yash Raj Films in last couple of years", "one of the best works of Salim-Sulaiman" and "much more than just a regular fun album". He selected Ainvayi Ainvayi, Aadha Ishq and Dum Dum (Sufi Mix) as the disc's best tracks. Moviehattan's Gurpreet Bhuller also liked the soundtrack, which he described as a "quality album" with "a good collection of songs".

Marketing

As with all films from the studio since Mohabbatein, publicity design was handled by Fayyaz Badruddin. Stills were taken by Abhay Singh and Zahir Abbas Khan.

Prior to the film's release, Anushka Sharma referred to it as her "best film till date". Band Baaja Baaraat's trailer and official website were both unveiled on 19 October 2010, a couple of months before the theatrical release. In addition to the film's synopsis and trailer, the website initially also contained five wallpapers and a press kit for visitors to download. The number of available wallpapers later grew to twenty-five and the website eventually allowed visitors to send e-cards to their acquaintances, with the virtual cards dubbed "Band Baaj-O-Grams". A number of contests were organised by Yash Raj Films, including one where the company, along with partners Radio Mirchi and BIG Cinemas, offered the winning couple a free wedding in December, in time for the film's release and supposedly planned the film's heroes, and another in which a couple would win a trip to Switzerland and visit the filming locations of the various Yash Raj Films productions to have been shot there. In addition to the website, Yash Raj Films also had regularly updated official pages on Facebook and Twitter and a Blogspot blog in an effort to reach the widest audience possible. The company finally uploaded a number of videos on their YouTube account, including the trailer but also several videos promoting the songs Tarkeebein and Ainvayi Ainvayi.

On 21 October, lead actors Anushka Sharma and Ranveer Singh went to the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi with director Maneesh Sharma to take part in their annual festival and promote the film. The next day, the trio appeared at the GIP Mall in Noida. On 26 October, a fight broke out between Ranveer Singh and a man alternatively described as a 29-year-old called Uday Khanolkar or a 30-year-old called Uday Sahay. The incident occurred on Kingfisher Airlines flight IT 331 from Mumbai to Delhi, where both Singh and Anushka Sharma were travelling in business class to promote the movie. The two actors noticed a passenger taking pictures of them with his cellphone, and demanded that he hand over his phone so that they could delete the pictures. The man refused and claimed to be an IAS officer. The ensuing argument grew so heated that the cabin crew had to intervene and both parties went to the police station upon arrival and stayed there for over an hour-and-a-half, eventually sorting the matter out amicably without lodging any complaints.

Prior to Band Baaja Baaraat's release, some pundits have expressed doubts that the film would be successful, citing the middling response to Yash Raj Films' last few productions, the lack of a male star and the fact that the female lead, Anushka Sharma, was by then an "almost-forgotten" actress. Some have even speculated that the 22-year-old's career might not thrive for much longer with her three-film contract with Yash Raj Films being over.

Theatrical run

On 24 September 2010, Yash Raj Films announced that the film would release worldwide on 10 December of that year, almost two years since the release of Anushka Sharma's debut Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Some people have speculated that this was not coincidence but an attempt to repeat the success of her first film.

Critical reception

The film received universal critical acclaim. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave it 4/5 stars commenting,"Thankfully, Band Baaja Baaraat works on every level. The writing [screenplay: Habib Faisal] is crisp, the execution of the material [director: Maneesh Sharma] is worthy and the lead actors [Anushka, Ranveer] steer the film to the destination smoothly. Of course, there are minor hiccups halfway through the film, but the fact remains that Band Baaja Baaraat is, without doubt, one of the most appealing films to come out of the production house. Final word? Band Baaja Baaraat is honest, fresh, youthful and extremely entertaining. Recommended!" Pankaj Sabnani of Glmasham gave it 4.5/5 stars and wrote,"There's an interesting blend of humour, drama and romance in the film. It's replete with great scenes.Make sure you join the celebrations and groove with this Band Baaja Baaraat. Strongly recommended." Anupama Chopra of NDTV awarded it 4/5 stars and commented,"Band Baaja Baaraat is reasonably entertaining. It's definitely the most fun you'll have in a theater this weekend." Rajeev Masand gave it 3/5 stars writing,"Band Baaja Baaraat works because it’s invested with an earnestness that’s become increasingly rare to find at the movies I’m going with three out of five for director Maneesh Sharma’s Band Baaja Baaraat. It’s a romantic comedy done correctly. Fun, but with warmth at its heart. Don’t miss it." Nikhat Kazmi of The Times of India gave the film 3/5 stars and opined,"As long as you view Band Baaja Baaraat as a loving, heartfelt take on what makes Delhi go dhak-dhak, the film holds your attention.Band Baaja Baaraat engages you with its fond look at fun-loving Dilliwalas." Sonal Dedhia of Rediff gave it 3/5 commenting,"On the whole, Band Baaja Baaraat is a refreshing film -- very different from the usual romantic comedy movies we're so used to. It is a well-made film that should connect with the audience. Give this one a chance, you won't regret it."

Box office

The movie had an opening of below ₹ 10 million. It grossed ₹ 95.0 million in the first week. The movie grossed ₹ 75.0 million in week 2, taking 2 weeks collection to ₹ 170 million. It earned ₹ 214.4 million. The film was declared a "Super Hit" by Box Office India. It earned approx ₹ 233.1 million in full theatrical run.

Awards and nominations