I missed this, because Star TV didn’t have the courtesy to suspend all broadcasting in honor of Dear Zindagi Week. It’s just the worst when these multinational media conglomerates don’t bother to tailor their products to local cultures. Anyway, catching up now, up first, Varun and Arjun! (first episode discussed here, and second here)
I actually took notes this time! Koffee With Karan is serious business! First note, “Varun-Shoes!”
(Not good. The shoes, the rest is okay)
He apparently broke into my apartment and dug through my closet until he found my old shower shoes from college, then flew back to India, cleaned them up a little, and wore them on international TV for some inexplicable reason. Proving the truth of the line I read once in a very bad romance novel, “Every man looks good in a 3 piece suit.”
Once they started talking, here’s the first interesting thing: Arjun and Rohit are closer than Arjun and Varun! I’m interested in that, because I am interested in Rohit. While everyone is waiting for people like Ranbir and Imraan and so on to live up to their illustrious relatives, Rohit has quietly done it already. The Dhawan film family is in a solid place to continue for another 30 years of crowd-pleasing comedies, with no fanfare or promoting it as “carrying on his father’s tradition” or anything like that. He just did it! And, being close to Boney Kapoor’s heir/a promising young actor, this could be the seeds of another Sippy-Bachchan 2 generations kind of power base.
Oh, and in terms of Varun and Arjun, Arjun is 2 years older, I assume when they were kids that was enough of a difference to make him Rohit’s friend (the difference between 8 and 10 is everything), but doesn’t matter so much now (the difference between 29 and 31 is nothing). Their story later of how they got close bares that out, they ended up in the same Barry John’s acting course and bonded there. Yeah, that checks out. Guy you sort of know your whole life, play with because he is your friend’s little brother, and then you are both in a distant city and a stressful situation and you end up clinging together because you are the only people you know. Although, there is still that little lingering “you’re 8 and I’m ten” vibe. For instance, late in the episode when Arjun pinches Varun’s cheek and declares him “such a cutie!”
Mostly though, and a little disappointingly, they were less cute and more manly. Like, really really grown up and confident. I had no idea! I thought they were still the charming young boys of film. But no! Very careful, very, kind of, wise! And much less jokey than, for instance, Shahrukh and Aamir.
Although I guess the lack of joking sort of showed their immaturity? Or at least lack of power. You can tease Shahrukh about dating and sex and bad acting and so on, because everyone knows he doesn’t mess around on Gauri, he isn’t really going to talk about sex, and he can actually act. But these boys, they can’t risk it. Any dating rumor could actually be true, they haven’t proved their acting, and they could theoretically be having sex.
I was super impressed with how Varun handled the pushy questions from Karan. Karan really really wanted him to acknowledge his relationship with Natasha on the show and Varun really really wasn’t ready yet. But it was fascinating (and kind of totally hot) watching him straighten up and get protective as soon as the questions started veering in that direction. I would so date Varun Dhawan! He knows how to be a gentlemen and keep you out of the media! Oh, and in the same section, Arjun was rumored to be dating Sonakshi? How did I miss this? They would have been great together!
Let’s see, what else is in my notes? “Varun, bigger star”. That was great! Karan asked he is the bigger star, and Varun immediately said “Me, I am the bigger star”, and Arjun said, “yeah, that’s right.” I liked it both as a moment of “aw, the little boy who used to play with me is a bigger star and that makes me happy!” and as a moment of “yeah, we are smart people who know the industry, and right now, Varun is bigger.”
Oh, and then Karan told a great story I hadn’t heard before about the first time he was giving Varun a tour of Dharma productions, back when Varun was just David Dhawan’s son, and they went into his chief executive officer’s office, and the CEO stood up right away because Karan had walked in, and Varun went “please, sit sit!” And it wasn’t a joke! He sincerely assumed that anyone standing must be standing for him!
Karan’s fun bit for this episode was having them do an audition/acting class style scene. Giving them the set up and some directions as they went along. It was okay, I mostly found it interesting for showing that Karan actually knew how to run these types of things. He is usually written off as more of a visual director than an actor’s director, but no! He knows this stuff.
Rapid fire! A so-so one. Only a couple of notes from that. Varun was asked if he had ever slept with a fan and said “No!” immediately (again, SUCH A GOOD BOYFRIEND!!! NATASHA IS SO LUCKY!). But then he added “I have a friend who has. He’s a Kapoor too.” So, Shahid or Ranbir? Or both?
(Pretty sure it’s both)
Both of them picked Katrina as the one to kill and the worst actress in the separate actress lists. Boy, poor Katrina! I guess she is so low on the pecking order that she is the safest one to abuse on TV.
And a couple final notes, in the quiz part, they had to do various things like translate English lyrics back into Hindi and name movies with things like Anil Kapoor without a mustache. And they were both really really good at it! Which is a level of trivia and film history knowledge you don’t usually see in young stars. Also, it was an occasion to mention Lafangay Parinday, the movie with The Stupidest Plot in the History of The World.
(He’s a boxer who fights blindfolded! She’s a roller-skating dancer who he blinds and then teaches to dance again! Together, they win the national televised roller-skating dance competition! But will they also win True Love?)
And finally, at the very end, Varun gives a very mature and careful statement about how he is very happy in his personal life, and he is grateful to the person who makes him happy, but he also asks that the media and everyone else please leave her alone because she is just a normal person who doesn’t need to be punished. SO JEALOUS OF NATASHA!!!!!
Oh, and also at the very end, Varun casually refers to Karan as “Papa Jo”, which is just about the cutest thing ever.
dontcallitbollywood 
I haven’t seen the episode yet but I’m planning on watching soon!
By the way, I remember reading somewhere that Ranbir is also childhood friends with Rohit. I think that Varun hung out more with Sonam, Rhea, and Harshavardhan Kapoor based on what I’ve read. Plus Shraddha 🙂
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Nice little future power squad there.
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After your comments, I was zoomed right in with my eagle eye on Varun’s shoes. They are actually color blocked tennis shoes — sort of the old Adiddas tennis shoe shape, with black toe section and gray around the ankle. But as he was walking, it almost looked like those plastic slider swim shoes my boys wear all summer. Whatever they were, they looked horrible on camera with his suit. Arjun looked better — nice shoes, and an interesting colored suit.
I also thought they were both very restrained and grown up in their answers. Very cagey and careful, and then acted like little boys during the quiz competition.
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Karan is brilliant to make them sit closer together during the quiz, it immediately triggers some kind of childhood regression.
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Varun and Karan shoe news of the past:
http://www.filmymonkey.com/bollywood/2015/04/24/revealed-here-is-the-name-of-the-person-who-gifted-shoes-to-varun-dhawan-on-his-birthday/
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Awwww! Karan is such a great mentor to his little guys!
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This was Arjun Kapoor, as in Boney’s son? Former boyfriend of Arpita Khan and close friend and rakhi brother of Katrina Kaif? Just last week there was a photo of him and Katrina walking hand in hand to some party. So what is it with Arjun, that he continually insults women he is allegedly close/friends with? First there were the rumored insults to Arpita by him on the AIB”Ki “roast”, and now this “kill” comment about Katrina? It almost makes me think that Karan has talked to Katrina ahead of this season and got her permission to be bashed on his show by everybody, though why she would agree to that, I have no idea.
Anyway, a big thanks to you for doing these KWK write ups. I can’t stand the show so never watch it, but this way I get the summary of what went on.
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Yes, Arjun, Boney’s son. I think with his relationship with Salman — and Varun’s admiration of Salman, that neither one wanted to go anywhere near the suggestion of hooking up with her. Safer to say kill.
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I could take or leave Varun. But I have a definite thing for Arjun! I really hope his career doesn’t flatline. No great expectations for Half-Girlfriend, partly because it’s Chetan Bhagat and he’s paired with the entirely boring (at least to me) Shraddha. I think he does need to go for more interesting roles like Aurangzeb and his debut in Ishaqzaade. He has a really great manic energy in his more serious, gritty roles and I’m just waiting for a director to tap into it again.
Obviously (after my comments on loving the intense Hrithik), we can see a pattern here…I do so adore a brooding hero. And maybe that’s why Varun doesn’t work for me at all (and even though Badlapur was logically a good film and his performance was good…my mind could just not compute for him in a dark avatar).
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Arjun is just ridiculously brooding! Even in something like 2 States, he brought in a darkness to the character. Which ended up working very well for that particular part, but I don’t know how many other parts there are that will work as well for him.
Someone else in the comments said that “Badrinath ki Dulhania” is supposed to be a little dark too, so we will have another chance to check out a darker Varun!
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My wish is Anushka Sharma’s command! Just saw that Arjun has been cast in her third production called Kaneda about the rise and fall of an NRI Punjabi gangster in Vancouver. Could be the perfect gritty role he needs after Ki & Ka and Half Girlfriend. She’s cast herself (love that a female producer can decide who she wants to work with!) opposite him and Diljit Dosanjh as well. I’m thinking Arjun is the lead, but maybe Diljit? She’s working with him in Phillauri and must like keeping him around:)
Another one to look forward to in 2017!
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I’ve gone on my rant to you about 1950s B-level girls romances and how hard they are to find, right? I suddenly flashed back to when I was reading dozens of “Toby, Legal Secretary” and “A Nightmare for Nurse Nancy” books with this comment. Because while our heroine was always competent and successful, her love interest had to be just a hair more so. Nurse-Doctor, Secretary-Lawyer, etc. etc. That’s what it feels like with Anushka’s mainstream roles. Sure, she has a juicy heroine part, and she gets to be a strong screen presence. But she always has to be opposite someone who is slightly bigger than her. When she was starting out, that meant manic Ranveer Singh or rising star Shahid Kapoor. Now she’s gotten too big, so she has to be cast opposite a Khan or Akshay or someone to make sure she stays in her place.
But in her own movies, suddenly it is gloriously reversed! She is casting MALE stars who are just a hair lower than her. I LOVE it! Also, I am very curious about the Arjun-Anushka dynamic, they have such different energies onscreen.
Margaret
On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 2:05 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I haven’t heard this rant before, but great analogy! I think that Anushka’s path is pretty representative in this regard. At first women either get paired with an aging superstar or with another debut, but then they have to worry much more about who they’re cast opposite because it means more to their career in the end about how they are positioned opposite their male leads. But like much in contemporary Hindi films, this does seem to have its exceptions and maybe a real change happening with more established women helping out rising male stars (Kareena and Arjun in Ki & Ka is one example and you could argue Sonam & Fawad in Khoobsurat, too).
I’m almost excited to see the Arjun-Anushka pairing on screen as I already am for the Anushka and Diljit pairing since I’m an instant fan of his. I suspect that Diljit and Anushka will have similar chemistry to her easy chemistry with Ranveer and that her chemistry with Arjun will hopefully be a bit more dangerous and adult.
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Have you seen Udta Punjab yet? Based on my very small sample size of Sardaarji and Jatt & Juliet, it feels like Diljit was really getting out of his comfort zone in Udta. Less the silly slapstick, and more kind of dangerous and deep. There was still that sweetness on top of it all, but you never doubted that he was a dangerous guy. Not like beat people up in huge silly fight scenes dangerous, but really scary dangerous. Maybe it was just me, but I didn’t find his explosion into calculated violence at the end of Udta as surprising as it would have been in, say, Sardaarji.
Anyway, that’s a long way round of saying, I wonder if his chemistry with Anushka will be more Anushka-Akshay than Anushka-Ranveer?
On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 3:11 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I have seen Udta Punjab and that’s why I watched Sardaarji, Jatt & Juliet, Mukhtiar Chadha, and Ambarsariya in quick succession;) What a brilliant film, perfectly cast and acted. I liked his character (and his performance) because he was so believably flawed, easily corrupted at first and then deep with an undercurrent of violent tendencies, but loyal and naive in some areas of his life. It was a strange transition into his Punjabi films because his roles have been for the most part broad comedy, although there is a weird undercurrent of complete innocence and ineptness to his romantic interactions that I find entertaining but not believable in those contexts like it was with the subplot in Udta Punjab. I did like Ambarsariya a bit better than Sardaarji, my other favorite, because the comedy in that script was a little bit wittier and his character had an interesting twist.
Phillauri does seem very loosely based on Sardaarji which is strange but not surprising…also, I’m really hoping that we see some more “natural” acting from him in a romantic role, even if it is a supernatural plot. He pulled it off in Udta Punjab and I’d like to see him in a more traditional romantic drama at least once before he does interesting things in other Hindi films (like possibly in Kaneda if he’s the villain or a complicated secondary love interest or whatever). I’m thinking their chemistry may be a little more Anushka-Ranveer, but I’m hoping for an Anushka-Imran type pairing, both kind of wacky but with a sexy chemistry. I’m an Imran Khan apologist and I love them in Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola. But I’m a true believer that Anushka brings out the best in her male leads.
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Thank you for reminding me about the romance in Matru! Not because it took me down an interesting intellectual path or anything, just because I really liked that romance and thinking about it makes me smile. I love the way Anushka starts out seeming like this shallow flighty rich girl, and then you slowly realize she has been in love with Imraan for years and is just trying to wake him up. And I love the way Imraan starts out seeming like this cool rebel beyond classes kind of guy, and then you slowly realize that he has been resisting his love for Anushka his whole life because he doesn’t think he is good enough. Wah!
On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 4:01 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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