Baani Sharma (Khushi Kapoor) is in love with Gaurav Sachdeva (Junaid Khan)
Starring: Junaid Khan, Khushi Kapoor, Ashutosh Rana, Devishi Madaan
Direction: Advait Chandan
Time for the nepo kids this Friday. The level of the promos do not match the earlier grandeur a la ‘Bobby’, ‘Love Story’, ‘Betaab’, ‘Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak’, or ‘Kaho Na Pyar Hai’. Even sibling Janhvi had a louder launch with ‘Dhadak’. Understandably, Junaid Khan is underplayed. However, with expectations low, the hope is high. Even that fails. Director Advait Chandan simply lacks the gravitas that is normally expected of films of this kind where star kids are launched. The unfortunate final product may well haunt Khushi Kapoor and Junaid Khan for a while.
The remake of the Tamil movie ‘Love Today’, this takes seeming pot shots at a generational dependence on social media but ends on a judgmental stance on relationships and seeming dishonesties and seems also to take the preachy route. All this probably done with some amount of class would still have been the mandatory over 120 minutes. From another perspective, Basu Chaterjee or Hrishida would have made a killing with this space. Unfortunately, Advait Chandan is not the same patch. In fact, not on the same path.
Baani Sharma (Khushi Kapoor) is in love with Gaurav Sachdeva (Junaid Khan). To get a picture of the rest in the 137-minute universe are Baani’s sister Pinti (Devishi Madaan) and the fulcrum to the narrative, her fastidious Dad Atul Kumar Sharma (Ashutosh Rana). Gaurav is Gucci at home with Mom Lalit Sachdeva (Grusha Kapoor), sister Kiran (Tanvika Parlikar), and her fiancé Dr Anupam (Kiku Sardar). There are also competing suitors for Baani, Puneet (Kunj Anand) and Coochiepoo (Bhawya Chawla). When Sr Sharma finds out that his daughter is in love, he forces Baani and Gucci to exchange their cellphones. Pandora’s box opens and, like the characters, the film-maker moves from one pothole to another, eternally trying to overcome embarrassment. The script half-heartedly ends up getting the lovers finally together. Good for the script. Not for the film that lets go an opportunity to deal with either of the issues it labours to address.
To repeat, the debutants do not give the film the required punch. In case you expected perfection from Junaid or glamour from Khushi, look elsewhere. Neither are chips of the block, Aamir Khan and Sridevi, here or now. Both, to be fair and optimistic, are still in the midst of honing their skills. Having made their debut on the OTT platform, they have some homework before acceptance and recognition. Even Ashutosh Rana seems to be staring at the camera and the characters. The sitar scene is a gross overreach and could have chipped from the film positively. Grusha Kapoor comes out with an extremely polished performance.
Nisha Mangalam, Sharma says. It means good night. This time, you are happy with the Mangalam.
