Genre : Romance
Year : 2013
Running time : 2 hours 30 minutes
Director : Punit Malhotra
Cast : Imran Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Shraddha Kapoor, Anupam Kher
Kidwise : G
Another silly-fest from director Malhotra (remember I Hate Luv Storys?). Here are the bare bones :
Sriram Venkat is the un-reverential, relatively uncultured, black sheep of a traditional Tamilian family. When his parents try to arrange a match between him and lovely Vasudha Natarajan (Shraddha Kapoor) Shriram recounts a past love tale to Vasudha, who doesn’t seem all that keen to marry him either. Anyway, the love tale is of lovely Dia Sharma (Kareena) a feisty, justice-wanting activist. The two Sriram and Dia tangle for a bit and break up. When talking to Vasudha, Sriram realizes that Dia actually is the girl for him. But she seems to have disappeared and even if he could track her down, would she have him?
What happens next isn’t all that interesting. Yawn! This is such a jaded, been-there-seen-that film! Kareena Kapoor makes a very unsatisfactory feminist – she might spout all those dialogues on wanting justice and equality for all, but she sees nary a problem when daddy wants to question the bf on how he will “maintain” her lifestyle. Like she’s a cow wanting a warm cowshed. Plus, when push comes to shove, Ms. Activist is content to have lover-boy do all the work (as seen in the second half) – she’s the activist, he’s just dabbling, shouldn’t she want to be in it, front and center? And the cherry on top is her song about the “naughty, naughty tooh”. Excuse me while I barf!
Shraddha Kapoor is cute in her little role. Anupam Kher is reduced to a caricature. The less said about hero Khan, the better. Songs are mediocre. The story is as weak as a new sapling in winter.
This was a majorly problematic film. Yes, it did work in little snippets like those of the traditional Tamilian family and their wayward son. But the characters were so inconsistent – happy and type-A when there was a peppy dance number in the background, and just blah and twitchy otherwise.
Yes, a full 2.5 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
Kidwise : Non-scarring for the kiddos.
