Chestnutted Love for the ‘Mango People’

I KNOW I’LL be damned forever for saying this, but Imtiaz Ali has lost his magic wand. However blasphemous it may sound like, Love Aaj Kal appeared to me as a soulless film. What was touted as the year’s best romantic comedy fell quite short of my expectations.

But wait! Aren’t we talking about a romantic film here? A soulless love story... does that make any sense? No, it doesn’t. And that’s precisely the irony with Love Aaj Kal. It has all the ingredients of a good romantic film, but it fails miserably in satisfying the most important criterion. Love Aaj Kal doesn’t make you fall hopelessly in love with it. Jab We Met did. Socha Na Tha did it too. So then what went wrong with Love Aaj Kal?

Imtiaz Ali is one of my favourite directors. He’s the man who redefined ‘love’ on Indian screen, stripping it of all the filminess we have endured over the years. Ali makes all his love stories look so believable — the plot, the situation, the characters, the way they behave, talk, react, fall in or fall out of love. Add to it a pinch of innocence and you can’t help but fall head over heels in love with them — be it Viren, Aditi, Aditya or Geet.

This confused me even more. Love Aaj Kal isn’t a crap film. Its Ali’s most ambitious and complex take on love till date, spanning two generations and three continents. But still there’s something that’s missing in the film. What is it? I don’t know. It may be the merging of the two love stories that was jarring at times. It may also be the post-interval portions that slipped into high-voltage melodrama, spoiling all the freshness Ali had built up so long. Or may be its the OTT depiction of Veer Singh's ‘pure love’ versus Jai's ‘practical love’ that was too preachy to handle.

Or is it Aditya and Geet whom I missed so badly that I tried in vain to find them in Jai and Meera in every frame of the movie?

I usually refrain from comparing one film with another. Every film is distinct in itself and there’s no point in making ‘oh-I-wish-Ghajini-was-as-good-as-Taare Zameen Par!’-type comments. But then when you have set a benchmark for yourself, you cannot afford to slump down! Imtiaz Ali did just that. He tried to make a smart, cool, fast-paced rom-com and so like all typical Hollywood rom-coms, Love Aaj Kal too boasts of some really witty one-liners, glossy shots, rich sets, loveable music and fine acting by its lead players. But somewhere in its swanky smartness it lost its innocence... its soul. Unlike Ali’s previous two films, Love Aaj Kal is more brain, less heart. Everything in the film looked too forced upon, the natural feeling of Jab We Met was surprisingly absent. You feel happy to see Jai and Meera getting reunited in the end, but forget it as soon as you step out of the theatre. They don’t linger in your memory like Aditya-Geet or Viren-Aditi.

Deepika was a revelation. With her vivacity, elegance and a smile that’s highly infectious, she was the perfect choice for Meera. However I missed Aditya. Saif tried too hard to bring back the Karan-effect of Hum Tum, but the déjà vu was too strong to ignore. Besides he looked pretty old as compared to Deepika (sorry, I couldn’t find any sugar-coated word). Giselle was stunning until she spoke (thankfully Ali had given her a handful of lines to deliver). Rishi and Neetu Kapoor were sweet as ever.

Imtiaz Ali once said that when he looks back today he finds a lot of loopholes in Jab We Met. He simply went with the flow while writing the script. I wish he had done just the same this time too. Some love stories aren’t meant to be logical.