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Bollywood Film Review

Johnson Thomas

This ain’t LOVE



Film: Love Aaj Kal (2.0) (Reboot)



Cast: Karthik Aryan, Sara Ali Khan, Aarushi Sharma, Simone Singh, Randeep Hooda

Director: Imtiaz Ali

Rating: * * ½

Runtime: 142 mins



Imtiaz Ali’s reboot of his hit romance ‘Love Aaj Kal’ is plagued by sameness and ennui. There’s nothing new to look forward to here. The romantic allusions, the wanton wilfulness of the heroine, the back and forth from past to present, and an unnecessarily protracted stalemate, only adds up to tedium. It’s Zoe’s film and she is allowed to run her rule and thankfully Sara Ali Khan is so assured and confident in that skin that we are willing to empathise with the illogical, almost obstinate turns her life takes.



A wilful, so-called self-professed career woman, Zoe(Sara Ali Khan) bumps into Veer(Kathik Aryan) at a nightclub and cupid strikes. She is willing to further the relationship and he is sappily overwhelmed but the reckoning comes when she has to chose between going to Dubai on a career move or staying back for togetherness. Not a compelling catch 22 situation because she is an aspiring event manager and its not as if the event in Dubai would have lasted forever. And sappy Veer was only too willing to accommodate her every whim… Interspersed into this narrative is the yesterday romance of Raghu rechristened Raj (Randeep) who in his younger school going days (played by Karthik Aryan again) jauntily romanced Leena(Arushi Sharma). Their romance encounters several hurdles along the way and that experience is what Raj is hoping Zoe will learn from when he confides in her at the co-working space that he runs.



Its Sara’s perkiness and Karthik’s sincerity that keeps you engrossed for at least the first hour of the film. After that the procrastinations by Zoe and sacrificing, idealistic mentality of Veer gets on your nerves. Randeep’s Raj is merely a father confidant and Randeep does an assured act, Arushi Sharma does well to imprint her presence given the rather sketchy role she is saddled with while Simone Singh as Zoe’s mom makes her all-too-brief presence felt with a strikingly emotive performance. There’s nothing novel here. What happened in 2010 film at least had novelty, this one talks about contemporary love and romance in a rather dysfunctional way. The heroine Zoe, comes across as someone who is unable to make up her mind about what she wants and her shrill deliberations border on the psychotic. The process of arriving at a conclusion is not interesting enough to keep us glued to our seats either. There’s so much talk (much of it rather banal) that you want to just tune off. Imtiaz believes in putting it all out there but it’s not poetry when conversations don’t feel organic. The craft is similar to the earlier film, the plotting has nothing new to impart and the locations don’t matter much either. The main Zoe-Veer romance track is so silly that you lose interest in their love much before they are shown as having broken-up. The songs and background score lend some soul but it’s never really enough to keep you engrossed throughout. ‘Jab We Met’ was Imtiaz’s most emotionally charged film, the ones that came after that were merely trying hard to keep up and failed. The 2010 ‘Love Aaj Kal’ had good songs and a construct that came at the cusp of a trend and therefore managed to catch the public eye, this redux or 2.0 doesn’t even have that!



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