Genre : Romance/Comedy
Year : 2014
Running Time : 2 hour 20 minutes
Director : Vinil Mathew
Cast : Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, Adah Sharma, Manoj Joshi, Sharat Saxena, Nina Kulkarni
Kidwise : G
This film is billed as a rom-com, but alas, it is neither. I did not like it. If you have pre-made your mind about seeing this film, read no further, since I will tell exactly you why you shouldn’t. You’ll have to go the theater with a sad face, and who wants to do that?
Nikhil Bharadwaj (Sidharth Malhotra) meets Meeta Solanki (Parineeti Chopra) briefly. She disappears and he moves on with his life , meeting and falling in love with Karishma (Adah Sharma). Nikhil is on the verge of tying the knot with Karishma when Meeta reappears. Chaos ensues.
Going by the trailer, I was so looking forward to this film. That trailer is actually better than the film, since it takes all the good parts (few though they were) and strings them together. You’d think that a romance starring a good-looking young man and peppy Parineeti Chopra would succeed, but director Mathew manages the impossible: he sucks out all the spontaneity and the joie-de-vivre out of this film with a lazy, laggard screenplay.
The first half of the film is SLOW. By the intermission, the hero-heroine have barely set eyes on each other. I for one, was still trying to figure out logistics, because this is a love-tale with large families included – one Gujju and one Punju. Hilarious right? Or so the director thinks. The play-by-play is exhausting, especially pre-interval, because it is spent in very slow build-up.
For a romance to work on screen, there must be a reasonable lead pair (there is), and sparks must fly (they didn’t). No snap, no crackle, no pop. No oomph! Nikhil Bharadwaj and Meeta Solanki talk to each other in half-phrases, all raised eyebrows, and contrived situations. They might connect on cricket talk, and yes, we do see them gallivanting over to late-night eateries, where they split drinks, but I’m not sure if it goes any deeper. Where is the love/passion/warm-fuzzy-emotion-thingy? Is this what a modern lovey-dovey pair looks like? Is this how the young talk and serenade each other now? And are they really this boring? Someone fetch me a pillow already!
The lead pair aren’t very realistically defined. The guy owns and runs an event management company, so he is, we are led to believe, a somewhat pushy, street-smart Punjabi brat. Now Malhotra is many things, but he does not look like a rugged, jugadu sort of a person. He’s got the Matt Damon kinda face – he looks like a nice person, a good guy. So, he’s a bad fit for this role. The girl is an IIT-ian, a female nerd, who goes to great lengths to continue her scientific research. But then, and this is where I have problems, this lady geek also very easily dons a backless choli and lehenga and becomes the life of the party – very inconsistent. Also, it’d have been nice if we had some evidence of her great brain-power, because all this supposedly smart person can do is get into mounds of trouble and run back to family/look to the hero to extricate her. The romance, such as it is, stems from the 2 person Pity Party – she is pitiful, and he pities her.
I mean, I can picture what the director thought he was making : Jugadu Punjabi Brat with Heart Of Gold meets Helpless Almost Bi-polar female Gujrati Nerd. And, and . . . (wait for it) Love Blooms! Unfortunately, this film is far removed from that vision, or very close (and really, I am not being sarcastic AND bitter), depending on your point-of-view.
What worked? Very little. The songs are lovely. Some of the minor characters were very well-done – like Nikhil’s mom (Nina Kulkarni) who is a placid housewife with an unexpected talent for classical singing. Then there is the beat-bopping weirdo cousin who fancies himself the Almost Kanpur-ia Idol and has a thing for Meeta. Adah Sharma does very well as the we’re on-we’re off fiancee.
This film is an exquisitely wasted opportunity; in the hands of a director who knew what he was doing, HTP could have been spectacular. As it is, it is a mildly boring snoozefest.
Kidwise : Clean. As clean as it gets.
