Movie Review: Love Aaj Kal Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Neetu Singh, Rishi Kapoor, Rahul Khanna, Vir Das Cinematographer: N. Nataraja Subramaniam Publicity Designer: Himanshu Nanda, Rahul Nanda Story Writer: Imtiaz Ali Costume Designer: Anaita Shroff Adajania, Dolly Ahluwalia Sound Designer: Dilip Subramaniam Music Director: Pritam Playback Singer: Neeraj Shridhar, Sunidhi Chauhan, Mohit Chauhan, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Kay Kay Background Sound: Salim Merchant, Sulaiman Merchant Lyricist: Irshad Kamil Music Company: Eros Music: Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Neetu Singh, Rishi Kapoor, Rahul Khanna, Vir Das Costume Designer: Anaita Shroff Adajania, Dolly Ahluwalia Producer: Dinesh Vijan, Saif Ali Khan Banner: Eros International Director: Imtiaz Ali
It’s the best romantic film to have come out of Bollywood in years
The mighty mysterious love, which has remained unexplained even after tomes of literature has been written about it and tones of celluloid consumed, finds a delicate, touching expression in director Imtiaz Ali’s film Love Aaj Kal. Through two parallel love stories, both equally moving and relatable, the movie tells its audience that Love Aaj is no different from Love Kal (yesterday) even though the way of expressing it for today’s i-pod generation may be different from that of the lovers of yore when just the meeting of eyes or passing of a smile could throb a heart more than a rocking bed on a one-night stand.
London 2009. Jai (Saif Ali Khan) and Meera (Deepika Padukone) click on their very first meeting in a pub and end up sharing their first kiss the same night. They don’t realize they are a couple until their friends point it out to them. And just when it seems they would walk hand-in-hand into the sunset, rears its head the modern-day monster that has doomed many love stories - Career! He has an American dream of clinching a job in Golden Gate, San Francisco, while she wants to make a career out of restoring the old monuments of Delhi. Clearly, their ways are separate, and, like any ‘practical’ couple, they mutually decide to split and even throw a break-up party.
But, can the matters of heart be resolved so easily? Is it so easy to snap the heart strings and move on?
The answer is given through the love story of a London restaurateur (Rishi Kapoor).
Delhi 1965. Veer Singh (Saif, again) is left thunderstruck when he first sees Harleen (a beautiful newcomer whose name has strangely been withheld). It’s a love mostly expressed in stares and suppressed smiles. But then, she goes away to Calcutta, leaving Veer lifeless, until he listens to his heart, and, driven by his love, overcomes the many odds piled up against him, to make Harleen his.
But will Jai go the Veer way?
Imtiaz Ali has crafted the film superbly by not just juxtapositioning the love stories of Jai and Veer but also following a non-linear route to tell each story. The dots are connected in an aesthetically beautiful way to give ‘Love Aaj Kal’ the structure of a complex origami that makes complete sense when all its segments come together to unravel a pretty design. And a fat share of credit for this should go to the editor, Aarti Bajaj, who does an incredibly good job.
To top it, Saif Ali Khan gives the best performance of his career. Unlike the painful performances we saw in Tashan and Race, here’s a Saif who is subtle, polished and spot on in his dual portrayal of Jai and Veer. There’s a scene where Saif is nonchalantly telling Rishi Kapoor that Deepika, from whom he has split, will move on in life, have new friends and new relationships. It’s quite a sight to see how his expression and tone changes from being dismissive to painfully sad by the end of the same long dialogue. It’s the stuff only seasoned actors can pull off.
Deepika Padukone is an image of grace in a role that requires her to talk more through the eyes than words. She doesn’t ham, nor is there any apparent effort on her part to underplay her character. Rishi Kapoor is good, but a special mention ought to be made of the girl who plays Harleen. She’s a pretty, delicate damsel who gets just two-three dialogues in the film but still leaves her image in your mind. Rahul Khanna, playing the new man in Deepika’s life, has a very small part which he plays convincingly.
Imtiaz Ali, whose forte is love stories, surpasses his previous two films Socha Na Tha and Jab We Met to touch a new high in ‘Love Aaj Kal’. The movie not just has an interesting structure and form, but a throbbing soul that reaches out to a viewer and sucks him/her in. Yes, there are a few sequences in the second half when the film slows down, particularly when Saif begins to date the blonde bombshell (Florence Brudenell-Bruce). But these hitches are too minor when compared to the impressive picture put together by Imtiaz.
Sprinkled throughout with light humour and songs that are hummable (thanks to Pritam), ‘Love Aaj Kal’ is a heady love potion strongly recommended to both the believers and non-believers of the ‘Heer-Ranjha’, ‘Romeo-Juliet’ kind of ‘janam janam ka saath’ stories.
Go watch it. You won’t be disappointed. Rather, you’d be left wanting to fall in love, if you are already not in it, that is.
Rating: ***1/2
Download the free mp3 songs of the latest Bollywood blockbuster movie Love Aaj Kal. The director of this movie is Imtiaz Ali. Pritam have composed music for this movie and lyrics by Irshad Kamil.
The movie is coming under the banner of production house Illuminati Films, owned by Saif Ali Khan and partner Dinesh Vijan. Sunil Lilla is the co-producer.
The star cast of this movie Love Aaj Kal includes feature Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone as in lead roles along with actors Rishi Kapoor , Neetu Singh and Rahul Khanna in supporting roles. Special Appearance in the movie is by a British model named Florence.
Download the free mp3 songs of the Latest Bollywood Movie Love Aaj Kal please click on songs and get the all songs.
Saif Ali Khan ... Jai Vardhan Singh Deepika Padukone ... Meera Pandit Rishi Kapoor Rahul Khanna Florence Brudenell-Bruce ... Jo Kavi Shastri ... Jaat Vir Das ... Shonty Mandi Sidhu ... Colly Elizabeth Tan ... Pae Fagun Thakrar Manushka Khisty ... Kashish Sagar Arya ... Mahesh Dolly Ahluwalia ... Harleen's Grandmother Rajendranath Zutshi ... Harleen's Father Nikki Simone Akhtar ... Irum Leeshon Alexander ... Marley Sheena Bhattessa ... Neha Phu Do ... Lee Luna LiVolsi ... Flower Sonu Louis ... Martin Isa Magomedov ... Architect Desi Motley ... Architect Niki-Simone ... Erum Kenyon Page ... Woman in San Francisco Tailor Shop Dennis Ruel ... Santos Manjot Singh Neetu Singh Toni Staniewicz ... Architect Shruti Tewari ... Counselor Jeremiah Turner ... Beautiful people at Fog City Diner
An action-comedy about a simple cook from Chandni Chowk (Akshay Kumar) mistaken for the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese warrior by the villagers of an oppressed Chinese village.
From the hustle-bustle of Chandni Chowk to the hutongs of Beijing, the electric energy of Shanghai and sheer breathtaking Chinese landscapes, Chandni Chowk To China chronicles the lunatic adventures of a hapless simpleton cook from Delhi. As he goes to seek his destiny, he finds himself thrown into a crazy world of megalomaniac villains, femme fatales, crazy inventors, Chinese mysticism and outlandish kung-fu assassins! Cast
Akshay Kumar ... as Sidhu
Deepika Padukone ...
Mithun Chakraborty ... as Guru
Gordon Liu ... as Hojo
Ranvir Shorey... as Chopstick
Hail Vishal Bhardwaj, the iconoclast of Indian cinema, the trail-blazer who redefines entertainment with his edge-of-the-seat roller-coaster ride called Kaminey that sucks (can’t lisp here) a viewer into the dark, netherworld of Mumbai through a riveting story of twin brothers, similar in appearance but as different from each other as chalk is from cheese.
Fasten your seat belts folks, and cast that cola aside. You are about to land into the dirty damp world of ‘Kaminey’, populated by bookies, trigger-happy drug mafia, corrupt cops and power-hungry goons with political ambition. In the melee of these kaminey characters unspools the story of Guddu and Charlie (Shahid Kapur), two estranged brothers who have nothing in common, not even their speech defects.
Charlie, who lisps (pronounces ‘sa’ as ‘fa’), is looking for a ‘fortcut’ to make big ‘paifa’ and become a bookie, while Guddu, who stammers, h..h..has a clear life plan charted out before him. He works for an NGO spreading AIDS awareness but - in a delightful irony - ends up impregnating his girlfriend Sweety (Priyanka Chopra) on a romantic night when that little piece of rubber went missing. And now, as he tears down the chart of his life-plan, Guddu has no choice but to unwillingly marry Sweety, not so much out of love for her or the child, but out of fear of her politician brother Bhope Bhau (Amol Gupte), a thickset, full-blooded Marathi manoos who wants to marry off his sister to an influential builder for political mileage.
On the other hand, Charlie, following the ‘fortcut’ to riches, creates a big mess around himself by filching a guitar case containing cocaine worth Rs. 10 crores. Soon, the corrupt cops of anti-narcotics cell and the drug lord Taashi (Tenzing Nima) are on his trail.
In this cat and mouse game, the baddies get mixed up between the twins. Who’s Guddu and who’s Charlie? Amid the shootouts and mayhem that follows, the two brothers rediscover love for each other.
‘Kaminey’ is not a path-breaking film. Nor is it too cerebral or thought-provoking. It is a heady cocktail of art-house realism and Bollywood masala with a distinct Tarantino tang. It is pure entertainment like never presented before in Bollywood.
The film’s breath is its imaginative screenplay which is full of humour-laced situations flicked straight out of life. Rather than opening all the cards at once, the story unravels in a way that keeps the curiosity alive. Though one can foresee the outcome of the story, it’s hard to predict the path it will take to reach that outcome. That’s what keeps you glued to the screen. Bharadwaj’s compositions, particularly the ‘Dhan Te Nan’ song and riff (used as leitmotif) and cinematography by Tassaduq Hussain are the strengths of ‘Kaminey’. But nothing holds the film together stronger than the performances by actors.
We haven’t seen Shahid Kapur act as good as he does in ‘Kaminey’. Not only does he master the speech defects, he puts on a different body language for the twin characters. It’s most apparent in a scene where the two brothers Guddu and Charlie have a fight. Priyanka Chopra too internalizes her character of a feisty, love-struck Maharashtrian girl impeccably. Note her in a scene where she squabbles with Shahid at the beginning of the film.
It’s hard to believe that no filmmaker in Bollywood yet utilized the talent of writer-painter-actor Amole Gupte (the writer and creative director of Taare Zameen Par). As a diabetic goon with political ambition, Gupte delivers the finest performance in the film. Don’t miss the mock gunplay between Gupte and the promising newcomer Chandan Roy (who plays Shahid’s sidekick) before one of them guns down the other at the start of the second half.
Bharadwaj has conceived many such interesting sequences in ‘Kaminey’. Take for instance that scene when Shahid and his partners in crime realize that the car they’ve stolen to get away from their chasers is actually a police car. Or the finale when all the baddies descend on the same hot spot and the guns are drawn. What follows is a funny bargain to divide the drug money.
Such gems apart, there are some weak links as well in ‘Kaminey’. The flashback story about the past of Guddu and Charlie and revealing why they hate each other is just not convincing. Or take that scene when an emotional Guddu begins to tell Sweety about his childhood crush. It’s embarrassingly cheesy.
Don’t go expecting the moon from ‘Kaminey’. It’s a bit violent, a bit funny, a bit emotional film that leaves you entertained but not wiser.
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