Written & Directed by: Siddharth Anand
Starring: Priyanka Chopra, Ranbir Kapoor
The successful director-actor team of Siddharth Anand and Ranbir Kapoor are back after the fun movie Bachna Ae Haseeno, with this supposedly greatest love story, Anjaana Anjaani. This time they have Priyanka Chopra for company. The expectations from it are huge given the stardom of the lead actors, the popularity of the songs, and the trailers which given an indication of another fun-filled ride. But alas, the movie disappoints.
The story is about two strangers– Akash (Ranbir Kapoor) and Kiara (Priyanka Chopra), who meet during their unsuccessful attempt at committing suicide. They decide to help one another in ending their lives. However, again, all attempts to do so fail. During this process they become friends and end up agreeing on a pact to end their lives on New Year’s Eve which is three weeks away. Next, they decide on doing all the things (wild, adventurous, stupid) which they would have wished to do before dying in the time they have left. The things they do and how that ends up affecting the current equation of friendship between them help them face the realities of life.
[ad#longpost]The positives are everything other than the script and the screenplay. Ranbir Kapoor gives yet another convincing and excellent performance as Akash. Time and again he has shown how solid an actor he is. Priyanka Chopra does well– this is another movie where she is excellent, but the script lacks the punch (a la What’s Your Raashee?). Chemistry between them is excellent on-screen. Both are super-strong in the emotional sequences and the comedy sequences are worth a mention. Everything about the lead pair is PERFECT.
The music by Vishal-Shekar is pleasing, and all of the songs are good, with “Anjaana Anjaani,” “Hairat,” and “Tujhe bhula diya” standing out. The lyrics in “aas pass khuda” (Vishal-shekar) and “tujhe bhula diya” (Vishal-kumar) are worth a mention. The background score is also excellent. The cinematograpghy by Ravi K. Chandran is again top-class, covering the best places of New York City, San Francisco, and the deserts of Nevada and Las Vegas. Siddharth Anand, the director, has done a commendable job. He gets the best from his lead and manages to catch the super chemistry on-screen. Given the huge amount of screen time that the leads are in a single frame, the movie would have TOTALLY fallen flat (even now it falls flat–but not totally so) if not for that.
Now for the biggest culprits for the film not delivering? The screenplay by Siddharth Anand himself. The movie starts off really slow and continues its snail’s pace right through. The writer runs out of ideas for “the things to do before dying” and “the love story” which are the basic building blocks of the script. (Some amount of inspiration was taken from Bucket List and Jab We Met for the basic building blocks). All good things are undone by the dull script and the lacklustre screenplay. It shows how important these are to a movie’s good outcome. Though there are few hilarious and lively moments, but again they come very far in-between.
Though some of the aspects of the movie are good, the script is a total letdown, and it ends up eating out all the charisma of the movie. It would be called trash if not for the sincere performances of the leads, music and the cinematography. Overall, the actors deserved better.
