Raat Gayi Baat Gayi

Film: Raat Gayi Baat Gayi 

Cast: Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Neha Dhupia 

Genre: Drama 

Direction: Saurabh Shukla 

Duration: 2 hours 

Critic's Rating: 

Story: Rajat Kapoor and wife Iravati Harshe attend a party at night and wake up to a frosty morning. What has brought about the chill in the marriage? Did the husband have a one-night stand with the delectable Neha Dhupia? The husband can't remember.... 

Movie Review: Fundoo party at night. Fuzzy logic next morning. Commonplace situation, no? So, when was the last time you woke up to a grumpy spouse/partner, a splitting head and memory interrupted...All you remember of last night's wild party are stray vignettes of drooling over the dishy stand-out-in-the-crowd, following him/her, whiny dawg-like, and desperately trying your luck with your best pick up lines. Voila! One line seemed to have worked, for the last memory you have is of a remote corner and some rosy possibilities that may or may not have come true. Did they come true....So how do you resolve the mystery of the one-night stand? 

Director Saurabh Shukla makes a sassy attempt to tell you how. Yet sadly, the film that begins so smartly -- great characterisations, witty dialogues, funky situation -- peters off into a somewhat pheeka climax, with our protagonists being forced to do an Akshay Kumar (hide in a closet). Now that's unwarranted because Raat Gayi... isn't supposed to be a run-of-the-mill comedy like De Dana Dan, is it? And awkward situations in slice-of-life cinema are generally resolved more realistically. 

Nevertheless, the film does augur for interesting viewing, providing an opportunity for a roll call of the entire current art house ensemble cast. Rajat Kapoor and Iravati Harshe are the upmarket couple invited to a party full of stock people. There are the hosts, pseudo-intellectual writer Dilip Tahil and airhead wife Navneet Nishan, the soil-bound Vinay Pathak and his svelte missus, Anuradha Menon, the ekdum desi `Austraylian myte', Ranveer Shorey, the enigmatic artist, Aamir Bashir and the oomph factor, Neha Dhupia. Trouble begins when Rajat Kapoor has a drink too many and can hardly control his libido after spotting the mysterious single woman (Neha Dhupia) who agrees to play hide and seek with him in the overcrowded house. Nothing wrong with that, except that Rajat's a devoted husband and Dhupia's already got a boyfriend. Have the flirty twosome ended up jeopardising their core relationships? Did the one-night stand actually happen? Is Sex and the City more than a mere sitcom? 

Watch out for some fine performances by the entire cast. Veterans like Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shorey are eminently watchable as always. But it is Neha Dhupia who is fast emerging as the natty new wave girl with her newfound talent. Not forgetting her item numbers too which do set the mercury rising in mainstream masala. Don't go looking for a desi flavour of the screwball comedy, The Hangover and you might just enjoy this slightly heady potion too.