Starring Shahrukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, and Vinay Pathak. In Hindi with English subtitles. Rated G.

In these troubled times for Bollywood, brought on by the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks and the worldwide recession, count on the powerhouse Yash Raj Films and superstar Shahrukh Khan to deliver a much-needed dose of cinematic magic when many substandard films are failing to connect.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, a dissertation on love and domesticity, is a simple story of a lonely Punjabi power company worker, Surinder Sahni (Khan), a man with few prospects for love or marriage. He gets both when he meets Taani (Anushka Sharma), the fun-loving, free-spirited daughter of his former professor.

Let's just say that in spite of the title, Surinder and Taani's is not a match made in heaven but a coming together of two diametrically opposed individuals under the worst circumstances.

Writer-director Aditya Chopra, who returns behind the camera after an eight-year absence, uses this setup to build a richly textured portrait of a man who has never loved in his life but falls head over heels for the woman suddenly plunked into his lowly life-a woman who has resolved to never love again but to perform the duty of a faithful wife. What is the man to do to win her love? In Surinder's case, whatever it takes.

Superstar Khan delivers one of his finest performances, one that asks him to deliver more dramatic chops than usual while giving him ample opportunity for comedy and dance numbers, which, as in many Yash Raj Films, are topnotch.

But it's legendary filmmaker Yash Raj Chopra's son Aditya who delivers a tightly assured piece of feel-good entertainment stripped of melodrama and clichéd characters in a story that has substance and emotional resonance. Aditya proves that he is truly the heir apparent to his father—the master of romance.