Sunny Deol's launchpad was Betaab – a boy-meets-girl romance set on a ranch-slash-farm of some sort. Bobby Deol’s launch film was Barsaat, also a boy-meets-girl romance; this one set in a college campus. The next generation of Deols is now to be launched and we see Sunny’s son Karan Deol in his launchpad film – Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas. Apparently Karan said, daddy, I want to be an actor and this happened: a movie directed by indulgent papa Sunny. Here is the trailer of Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas and reactions to it.
Karan Deol plays the imaginatively named good boy Karan Sehgal who takes people trekking, rappelling and zip-lining across rivers. Sahher Bambba as Sahher Sethi appears to be the spoilt girl who must, of course, be tamed and made to realise the error of her ways. Throw love, conflict and perhaps some disapproving adults into the mix and we have a million other Hindi films Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas.
The filmmakers are plugging this as the biggest love story of the generation. We can probably take this to mean that this will be yet another story where the girl first protests, then loves; where the sweet, decent boy is forced to fight for his love… you know the stuff that we have only seen in a few thousand other Hindi films.
He is the son of Sunny and the grandson of Dharmendra. Ergo he has an automatic fan following already.
B town stars were generous with their praise and their blessings for the newbie’s first cinematic outing... in the tradition of looking out for industry insiders.
Ours is a society that thrives on dynastic privilege, so many see the third generation of Deols claiming their place in the film industry as rightful and natural.
Reportedly, papa Sunny auditioned over 400 girls for the role of Sahher. One can be pretty sure that no one except Raja Beta Karan ‘auditioned’ for the male lead.
Not everyone has been kind and indulgent of the Deol family scion. Some commentators have panned the trailer as a snooze fest and Karan’s attempt at becoming Sunny Deol 2.0 to be sadly lacking.
His slow and clumsy dialogue delivery has come in for a lot of criticism. Some industry pundits predict a flop.
Many would argue that Sunny Deol himself is not much of an actor, the yelling, the glaring eyes and the ‘dhai kilo ka haath’ notwithstanding. Even his staunchest fans would hesitate to say he can dance. Some predict that son Karan will be “even worse”. This commentator also takes a dig at the way that second and third-generation Bollywood actors not only claim their stardom like some sort of right but also proceed into politics in a similarly entitled fashion though they may have qualifications for neither.
As for me, in many shots of the trailer all that I could see on the screen, was a very large nose and a nice young man who seemed to have wandered on to a film set purely by mistake. I suppose we shall have more clarity when the film releases on 20th September 2019.
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