Tag Archives: 2 Stars

Movie Review: Wild Wild Punjab (2024)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Wild Wild Punjab on Netflix

TV director Simarpreet Singh makes the jump to features with the Netflix Original film Wild Wild Punjab, a road trip comedy written and produced by Luv Ranjan.

Office drone Khanna (Varun Sharma) caught his co-worker girlfriend Vaishali cheating on him with their boss, and now the new couple is getting married.

Distraught Khanna wants to end his life, but his womanizing friend Maan (Sunny Singh) has a better idea. Maan says that, while Vaishali thinks she’s traded up, if Khanna tells her that he’s over her, it’ll make her question whether she’s with the right guy.

Their friend Honey (Manjot Singh) agrees, but he thinks it’ll be most effective if Khanna tells Vaishali “I am over you” in person. Festivities are underway for her wedding in Pathankot, which is only a three hour drive from Patiala. Honey offers to drive them there in his souped-up truck.

The only friend with reservations is cowardly Jain (Jassie Gill), but that’s just because he’s terrified of his overbearing dad. Jain’s own arranged marriage is scheduled for next week, so he’s already got plenty to worry about. Still, the guys convince Jain to lie to his dad and join them since they’ll be back from Patiala by morning. What could go wrong?

Before they’ve even left town, the guys crash a wedding to get free food and drinks. When they wake up hungover the next morning at a stranger’s house, Jain discovers he’s married to the woman whose wedding they crashed. And they’re still hours away from Pathankot.

As immature as the friends are, they’re actually decent guys. Their plan isn’t borne out of vindictiveness, but out of concern for Khanna’s well-being. Taking him to his ex’s wedding to tell her he’s moved on isn’t that disruptive, and it will give him back a sense of control.

After some initial reluctance, they even welcome Jain’s accidental bride Radha (Patralekhaa) into the group. She suggests that Khanna’s declaration will be more believable if he’s accompanied by a new woman, and they head to a nearby college to find one. That’s how feisty Meera (Ishita Raj) joins the crew.

When the story focuses on the characters, it’s pretty entertaining. It helps that the acting is uniformly good, with Manjot Singh and Patralekhaa standing out among the rest. Counterintuitively, the story drags during the action scenes in the second half, when the group engages in multiple car chases and a shootout with drug dealers. Drugs and guns feel like perfunctory signifiers that the movie is set in Punjab, as if without those tropes the movie would lack a sense of place.

Simarpreet Singh’s direction is overall good, and the screenplay — co-written by Ranjan, Sandeep Jain, and Harman Wadala — is decent. But Wild Wild Punjab is a misleading title for a movie so conventional.

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Movie Review: Murder Mubarak (2024)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Murder Mubarak on Netflix

The mystery Murder Mubarak is packed with characters but feels insubstantial. Sara Ali Khan and Vijay Varma show why they are in-demand actors, but Pankaj Tripathi’s turn as an offbeat detective feels too familiar.

The film — based on Anuja Chauhan’s novel Club You to Death — invites comparison to Knives Out, as both feature a murder where most of the suspects are obscenely wealthy. However, a critical difference renders the class undertones in Murder Mubarak less satisfying. The murder victim in Knives Out is the patriarch of a rich family, whereas the dead man in Murder Mubarak is an employee at a posh country club.

Director Homi Adajania’s movie takes place at the Royal Delhi Club, a British colonial relic. The morning after a raucous party, the club’s hunky fitness coach Leo (Aashim Gulati) is found dead in the gym. Police inspector Bhavani Singh (Pankaj Tripathi) and his assistant Padam Kumar (Priyank Tiwari) determine that Leo’s death was homicide and set about questioning the eccentric members.

None of them are eccentric in a fun way. There’s B-grade actress Shehnaaz (Karisma Kapoor), royal descendant Rannvijay (Sanjay Kapoor), and Cookie (Dimple Kapadia), whose tongue is bright red from constantly drinking beet juice. Club president Bhatti (Deven Bhojani) has a perpetually runny nose that he wipes with his hand before touching people.

Adajania insists on showing example after example of the president’s revolting habit. It highlights an unexpected gross streak in the movie. Deaths that occur later in the film are needlessly gory, and Cookie’s bright red tongue is unappealing, too.

Inspector Singh discovers that Leo the trainer was blackmailing several members of the club, using the money he extracted from them to fund the orphanage where he grew up. While this gives those being blackmailed a motive to kill Leo, his death actually makes their lives easier. It’s not like there’s a killer targeting rich folks. The only consequence is that one of the other trainers at the gym will have to take over the Zumba class.

The surfeit of tedious oddball characters accentuate the narrative’s slow pace. The only characters who are remotely interesting are two of the club’s younger members: twenty-something widow Bambi (Sara Ali Khan) and Aakash (Vijay Varma), who’d rather be anywhere else. He’s had a crush on Bambi forever but left town after her wedding. She still knows how to push his buttons and does so to keep him around.

Khan’s performance is natural and engaging. Varma likewise demonstrates why he’s cast in seemingly every Netflix Original movie these days. Sanjay Kapoor has one very good scene, but the rest of the performances are nothing to write home about.

Tripathi has been the go-to guy for quirky roles for several years now, and the well is starting to run dry. Inspector Singh is fine but unremarkable. It’s time for casting agents to find a new actor to pigeonhole into these types of parts and let Tripathi move on to meatier roles.

There’s a chance that the book Club You to Death is better than the movie, but Murder Mubarak is so lifeless that I’m not tempted to find out.

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Movie Review: Merry Christmas (2024)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

“Merry Christmas” was filmed simultaneously in Hindi and Tamil. This is a review of the Hindi version.

Something got lost in Merry Christmas‘s translation from page to screen. The mystery doesn’t quite work, due in no small part to a miscast lead duo.

Director Sriram Raghavan’s latest thriller is an adaptation of French author Frédéric Dard’s novel Bird in a Cage. Set in “Mumbai when it was called Bombay,” the story follows a fateful meeting between two mysterious strangers on Christmas Eve.

Albert (Vijay Sethupathi) returns to his mother’s apartment for the first time in years after working abroad. Mom died a while ago, and her walker still stands next to the bed, as if waiting for its user to return.

He goes to a fancy restaurant and watches a man ditch a beautiful woman, Maria (Katrina Kaif), and her little daughter, Annie (Pari Maheshwari Sharma), in the middle of dinner. Intrigued, Albert follows mother and child to the movies. When Annie falls asleep, Albert offers to carry her home.

Maria invites Albert in for a drink and puts on some music to set the mood while she puts Annie to bed. Christmas tunes, surely. Or maybe something seductive? Nope, Maria puts on “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg.

This sequence in Maria’s apartment is where the film lost me. Besides the weird musical choice — which is explained later, though not exactly why that particular piece of music needed to be used — the apartment is lit so brightly from above that it looks like the set of a TV sitcom. The unnatural lighting makes a goofy sequence in which Albert and Maria dance to holiday tunes look downright bizarre.

It’s a shame since building interiors are otherwise one of the film’s strongest suits. The decor in the restaurant and theater are gorgeous. The wallpaper in Maria’s apartment is seriously stunning.

This is also the point in the movie where we should start to get a sense of who Albert and Maria are and what they might want from each other. Yet there is zero chemistry between Sethupathi and Kaif, so it’s hard to tell. They both look like they are just going through the motions.

The problem really is just the two of them together. In a flashback scene opposite Radhika Apte, Sethupathi is an entirely different actor. And I’ve seen Kaif in enough films to know she’s capable of much better with the right partner.

The disconnect between the two leads makes the first half of the film crawl until a suspicious death resets the pace and raises questions. Unfortunately, the renewed tempo doesn’t last for long, slowed again by acting that feels flat.

When the truth of what is happening is revealed, it lacks a sense of inevitability. I suspect there are details that might have stood out more in the book that weren’t emphasized visually in the film. Rather than ending with the audience saying, “Aha!” Merry Christmas ends with an “Okay.”

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Movie Review: Dunki (2023)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani’s Dunki addresses the inhumanity of national borders and immigration policies that disproportionately punish the poor. In typical Hirani fashion, he uses humor to make the problem relatable, but the grim, visceral middle section of the story feels out of place.

Dunki begins with the same framing device Hirani used in 3 Idiots: three long-time pals set out to meet another friend they haven’t seen for many years. This time, the action begins in 2020 in London, as a grey-haired woman named Manu (Taapsee Pannu in old lady makeup) breaks out from the hospital. She holds her IV bag aloft as she navigates public transit in her hospital gown, a sequence that makes for great visual humor. Pannu is the film’s standout comic performer.

Manu meets her buddies Buggu (Vikram Kochhar) and Balli (Anil Grover), who are as eager as she is to return to their Punjabi hometown. But visas are tricky to come by, so they decide to contact the friend who helped them get out of India 25 years ago — Hardy (Shah Rukh Khan).

The action flashes back to 1995, when Buggu, Balli, and Manu hoped to solve their families’ financial problems by working in England. A thriving visa-fraud industry in town promises to help those without skills or money emigrate through dishonest means. Hardy arrives in town to repay a debt to Manu’s recently deceased brother and stays to help her.

The four enroll in an English language class of dubious repute led by Geetu (Boman Irani, who also played an educator in 3 Idiots). Vicky Kaushal has a lengthy cameo as a fellow student named Sukhi. There’s an extended comedy bit as the students think they’ve found a sneaky way to pass their official English exams without really learning much English. Some of it is quite funny, but like many of the bits in Dunki, it’s longer than it needs to be.

When conventional and unconventional methods fail to get them visas, Geetu proposes a third option: the dunki (“donkey”) method. This involves paying brokers to smuggle them over land into Turkey, then via shipping container across the sea to England. It’s illegal, expensive, and dangerous, but it’s their only option. Hardy joins them, hoping the skills he learned as a soldier will help them survive the journey.

This is where the film’s comic tone shifts to something darker. There are some gruesome deaths and an attempted sexual assault that make what had been a family-friendly movie into one requiring parental discretion. It seems like an attempt to do justice to the very real horrors faced by those migrating illegally, but the change is abrupt.

While Hirani deserves credit for shining a light on this global justice issue, his fictional narrative leaves something to be desired. The characters are indistinct and forgettable, and decades of their experience are absent from the story. The audience is only supposed to care about what the characters go through, not who they are, so Hirani doesn’t develop them as individuals.

This is Shah Rukh Khan’s first film with Hirani, who gets a classic performance out of the star. The film’s lone dance number “Lutt Putt Gaya” is enjoyable, although it would’ve been fun if Pannu played more of a part in it. Khan’s other 2023 releases were action thrillers, so this was a nice change of pace. It’s just too bad Dunki‘s screenplay wasn’t up to snuff.

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Movie Review: 12th Fail (2023)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch 12th Fail on Hulu

Even though 12th Fail is based on the life of a real person, the film feels abstracted from its main character. The story contains a number of obstacles that can trip up viewers unfamiliar with the hiring processes of the Indian civil service.

Vikrant Massey plays Manoj Kumar Sharma, who grew up in a poor, rural village but studied and sacrificed to become a member of the Indian Police Service (IPS). Obviously, the movie doesn’t need to explain what the IPS is to Indian viewers, but it’s not made clear to outsiders how, say, an IPS officer differs from a DSP (Deputy Superintendent of Police). The film uses a lot of abbreviations that blur together for those not steeped in the shorthand.

The story begins in 1997 when Manoj is a teenager in Chambal. The area is known for its bandits, and the mayor runs the village on bribes and corruption. Newly transferred DSP Dushyant Singh (Priyanshu Chatterjee) arrests the school principal for encouraging students to cheat on their exams. Manoj is so inspired by the righteous DSP that he vows to study and become an IPS officer.

Even Manoj is surprised at just how labyrinthine the process to become an Indian civil servant is — and just how small the odds of success are. After passing high school, there are multiple exams: some multiple choice, some essay, including some in English. Students get four total attempts to pass the exams, and that’s it. If they pass their exams, they still have to clear a brutal final interview.

The process can take years to complete, which makes it hard for anyone who has to work while studying. Everyone who takes the tests pays for exam coaching, further weeding out many poor and working class applicants.

Manoj heads to the city of Gwailor to pursue coaching, only to be robbed before finding the coaching center shut down. He gets lucky when he meets Pritam Pandey (Anant V Joshi), another prospective student. Pritam’s family has money, so he takes Manoj with him to Delhi. The two stay friends even as Manoj works a series of low-wage jobs, studying into the wee hours of the night.

Writer-director Vidhu Vinod Chopra makes Pritam the narrator of Manoj’s story, which creates a distance between the audience and the main character. As the narrative proceeds, it becomes clear that the character Manoj portrays in the film is mostly a generic symbol of underprivileged test takers–and not an interesting character, himself. As Manoj’s lower caste friend Gauri (Anshumann Pushkar) says, “Even if one of us wins, the whole herd wins.” But if we don’t care about the one, it’s that much more difficult to be invested in the herd.

Despite featuring Manoj’s friends and eventual girlfriend Shraddha (Medha Shankar), it doesn’t feel like we get much insight into Manoj. He’s determination personified, but that’s about it. Massey’s performance in the lead role is solid.

In addition to the movie’s characterization issues, the studying and test-taking processes are shown in greater detail than is necessary, bogging down the pace.

The real Manoj’s accomplishments are inspirational, but 12th Fail itself is a bit dull.

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Movie Review: The Archies (2023)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch The Archies on Netflix

One of Netflix’s most highly anticipated Original films turned out to be one of its most underwhelming. Much of the hype leading up to the release of The Archies had to do with its cast of newcomers, some from prominent Bollywood families. None of them are at fault for the film’s problems, which are rather due to uncharacteristic missteps by the film’s writer-director, Zoya Akhtar.

Based on the Archie comic books, the movie takes place in 1964 in the fictional Anglo-Indian hill town of Riverdale, India. The story is centered around the town’s teenagers, including Archie (Agastya Nanda, Amitabh Bachchan’s grandson), his neighbor Betty (Khushi Kapoor, Sridevi’s daughter), her best friend Veronica (Suhana Khan, Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter), and their pals Reggie (Vedang Raina), Jughead (Mihir Ahuja), Ethel (Aditi Saigal, aka “Dot”), and Dilton (Yuvraj Menda).

There are various romantic entanglements and crushes within the group, the most chaotic of which is Archie’s fondness for both Betty and Veronica. Those complications get pushed aside when Veronica’s wealthy father Hal (Satyajit Sharma) pressures the town council to let him build a hotel in the middle of Green Park: a place important to Riverdale’s young people. Archie and friends get a quick education in political organizing and band together to save the park.

When the story focuses on the teens, it’s pretty entertaining, if mostly surface level. Mihir Ahuja as Jughead is the only one with prior acting experience, and his performance is the most assured. The rest of the young actors show promise, particularly Suhana Khan’s dancing and Khushi Kapoor’s attentiveness toward her fellow performers during scenes.

Things slow down when the adults get involved, sapping the dynamism from the film. The teens are absent from a lot of these scenes, shining a spotlight on their expository nature. Was there no better way to convey information than via grownups sitting around talking?

The slow periods stand out because The Archies is structured more like musical theater than a typical “Bollywood” movie. Many of the songs flow out of conversations and have lyrics that are literal rather than metaphorical. You can sense how scenes would physically transition from one to another were this to be turned into a stage musical. Even in this movie version, the scenes with adults talking need to feel just long enough to allow for a set change to happen in the background, and no longer.

Considering that The Archies is a musical, it’s unfortunate that its songs are so forgettable. “Sunoh” and “Va Va Voom” — the two tunes Netflix used in their promotions for the film — are the best of the lot. Instead of using an upbeat number during a rally for the park, Akhtar uses the ballad “Yeh Saari Aawazein.” Betty periodically sings some of her diary entries, but the performance style is too contemporary and feels out of place.

The disappointing quality of the songs is countered by novel, entertaining choreography. There’s something going on in every corner of the screen in the tune “Everything Is Politics.” “Dhishoom Dhishoom” is danced entirely on roller skates. On top of that, the film’s styling and costuming is top-notch.

Good elements like choreography and costume design can’t counterbalance the film’s structural issues and overall underwhelming vibe, unfortunately. Akhtar’s vision for The Archies is interesting, but the execution isn’t up to her usual high standards.

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Movie Review: Tumse Na Ho Payega (2023)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Tumse Na Ho Payega on Hulu

Do yourself a favor and only watch the first two-thirds of Tumse Na Ho Payega (“You Won’t Be Able to Do It“), when it appears to be an anti-capitalist parable about the moral, psychological, and social cost of growing a business to sate the voracious appetites of institutional investors.

Turn it off before you get to the part where, actually, turns out you just need to align yourself with a beneficent venture capital firm that will allow you to engage in “good” capitalism.

Ishwak Singh plays Gaurav, an office drone who gets fired when his boss overhears him complaining that his boring engineering job is boring. Against the advice of his mom Pooja (Amala Akkineni) and bossy neighborhood gossip Anu Aunty (Meghna Malik) — whose snobbish son Arjun (Karan Jotwani) is the youngest general manager in his financial firm’s history — Gaurav decides to start his own business.

Gaurav’s downstairs neighbor Pummy Aunty (Farida Dadi) is a great cook. Whenever he would bring a tiffin full of her dishes for lunch, his coworkers — young, single people living in Mumbai away from their parents — would go crazy for her tasty home-cooked meals. Gaurav gets the idea to recruit other aunties to make extra food to sell to office workers who are sick of takeout. Thus is born the food delivery service Maa’s Magic.

Maa’s Magic takes off with the help of Gaurav’s programmer buddy Mal (Gaurav Pandey) and his social media manager crush Devika (Mahima Makwana), who is currently dating that jerk Arjun. But being able to support themselves doing work they like isn’t enough to impress Arjun and Anu Aunty. Soon, Gaurav and Mal make a deal with an unscrupulous venture capitalist who pushes them to expand their business, even if it ruins everything good about Maa’s Magic.

At this point in the story, the movie’s message is obvious: don’t sell out for the sake of money. Being successful is about more than just money, and no amount will ever be enough to satisfy your naysayers. Making a difference in your community and being happy day-to-day is priceless.

Then Tumse Na Ho Payega throws all that feel-good stuff out the window to remind us that growth is paramount. In fact, you owe it to your customers to always grow your company. Speaking on behalf of customers, that’s a load of bunk.

The story’s disappointing twist stems from the fact that the movie is adapted from the mostly autobiographical book How I Braved Anu Aunty and Co-Founded a Million Dollar Company by Varun Agarwal. While the plot may be accurate to Agarwal’s experience, it makes for an inconsistent and ultimately disappointing narrative.

Also working against Tumse Na Ho Payega are dialogue and performances that are strictly utilitarian. There are some interesting sequences where the characters address the camera directly or in mocking voice-over conversations, but the film overall is forgettable.

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Movie Review: Thank You for Coming (2023)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Bhumi Pednekar showcases her ability to master any kind of material in the sex-positive comedy Thank You For Coming. Unfortunately, poor pacing and inconsistent world-building keep this progressive story from reaching its full potential.

Pednekar plays Kanika Kapoor, an energetic single woman in her early 30s with an unfulfilling sex life. The film opens with a recounting of all of the disappointing men she’s dated, from a selfish high school boyfriend to a much older professor (played by Anil Kapoor). After we receive all this background and are introduced to her gynecologist mom and conservative grandmother, we learn Kanika has decided to marry a well-to-do nerd named Jeevan (Pradhuman Singh). Better to be hitched and unsatisfied than alone and unsatisfied, she figures.

For some reason, all of Kanika’s exes are invited to the couple’s engagement party. After a drunken night, Kanika wakes up in her hotel room alone. The only thing she remembers is that she finally had her first orgasm, but she doesn’t know who was with her when it happened. She and her pals set out to find the mystery lover before the wedding takes place.

Kanika’s hotel room revelation marks the halfway point in the story, which is way too late in the proceedings, especially since the material that proceeds it is only okay. Besides a few funny moments from Kanika — made all the more entertaining by Pednekar’s committed delivery — there’s a lot of dialogue that isn’t particularly humorous or informative. Critical information that will be relevant later is said in passing rather than shown, so it hardly even registers as something that might be important to the story.

One strange choice by director Karan Boolani and writers Radhika Anand and Prashasti Singh is that they hardly feature Kanika’s cool and very movie-friendly job. A new acquaintance Rushi (Shehnaaz Gill, who is bubbly and fun in her role) says that she is a super fan of Kanika’s work as a food blogger. The only time we see Kanika actually working is in a single, brief scene where her friend’s teenage daughter Rabeya helps her take some food photos. That’s it.

Incorporating food into films would’ve been an easy way to provide visual interest in a movie prone to telling, not showing. Plus, one of the film’s themes is about Kanika accepting herself as she is, and being a popular food blogger would seem to be a pretty big endorsement of one’s self-worth. Instead, the movie reduces Kanika’s whole being down to her floundering sex life.

Thank You for Coming makes compelling points about the double standards held against women who pursue sexual satisfaction. It’s particularly effective in a subplot featuring Rabeya that calls back to Kanika’s own troubled high school romance and its effects on her reputation.

Still, there’s too much dull, inessential fluff in Thank You for Coming, keeping it from being the snappy comedy it should be. Pednekar is a delightful lead, but the story lets her down.

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Movie Review: Friday Night Plan (2023)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Friday Night Plan on Netflix

If one tried to create a movie for teenagers who can’t put away their smartphones for more than a few minutes, it would probably look like Friday Night Plan. The latest Netflix Original Indian Film is generic and lightweight, so there’s no reason to give it one’s full attention.

The premise of Friday Night Plan feels familiar. Two bickering brothers — high school senior Sid (Babil Khan) and high school junior Adi (Amrith Jayan) — are left home alone on a Friday night when their mom (Juhi Chawla Mehta) goes to Pune for a work trip. She warns them not to fight or take the car out, assuming the boys will stay home playing video games.

Of course, the brothers wind up taking the car to a party at the house of the prettiest girl at their wealthy international school, whom Sid has had a crush on for years, only to lose the car while playing a prank on students from a rival school. Sure hope they can get the car back before Mom gets home!

The familiarity of Friday Night Plan — which seems like a hundred teen movies that have come before — isn’t a problem in itself. But the film is boring. The boys’ “wild night out” lacks a sense of danger or urgency. Even they don’t seem that worried about getting into trouble. Yes, the kids at the party drink alcohol, but there’s also karaoke and a pillow fight.

Real teenagers are funnier and more interesting than this movie’s flat dialogue makes them out to be, and the characters are bland. The school’s top jock Kabir (Aditya Jain) isn’t a bully, he just sometimes gives people unflattering nicknames. The pretty girl Nat (Medha Rana) has no secrets, she’s just good-looking and rich. Even the two brothers aren’t really that different from one another.

It’s not fair to blame the cast for the tepid characterizations. Hardly any of them have any acting credits, since children barely exist in Hindi films. Friday Night Plan is writer-director Vatsal Neelakantan’s first feature film, and his inexperience shows in both the direction of his young actors and in his screenwriting. Tighter pacing would have amped up the excitement level of this tame story without having to make things any spicier.

There’s one misstep I can’t let slide. The events of Friday Night Plan take place one week before senior prom, and none of the kids have asked anyone to be their prom dates! That’s not enough time to order matching corsages and boutonnieres, make after-party plans, and figure out where to take photos — let alone find a dress and shoes and make a hair appointment if you weren’t already planning on going to the dance solo!

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Movie Review: Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat (2023)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Two sets of doppelgängers in two different countries make bad decisions in the name of young love in Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, the latest film from writer-director Anurag Kashyap. The romantic drama putters along before taking a wild turn that comes out of nowhere.

The two pairs are played by Alaya F and newcomer Karan Mehta. In India, DVD seller Yaqub (Mehta) follows high school student Amrita (Alaya) around like a puppy. In England, rich girl Ayesha (Alaya) hounds DJ Harmeet (Mehta), the first guy who’s ever rejected her advances.

It’s unclear exactly how old the characters are. This info is important not only because it sheds light on the characters’ relative maturity levels, but because age of consent plays a part in the England storyline. It’s also important because it could clarify the characters relationships to each other. If he’s 19 and she’s 17, it’s quite different than if he’s 19 and she’s 13.

Both storylines happen in the same reality, and the glue that connects them is DJ Mohabbat (Vicky Kaushal). The pairs are inspired by the musings on the nature of love that DJ Mohabbat shares on his podcast. But for us in the movie’s audience, his monologues aren’t that compelling, and they kill the plot momentum.

Yaqub and Amrita steal her brother’s motorcycle in order to travel to DJ Mohabbat’s concert in another city. They get stopped along the way and hide out in an empty summer cottage. She’s pretty sure her family will forgive them for running off together, even though they locked her in a room just to keep her from talking to Yaqub, who is Muslim.

In England, Ayesha will not leave Harmeet alone. Instead of being turned off by her relentlessness, Harmeet says something about being scared to love her because of the intensity of her feelings for him (or similar nonsense that only movie characters say). They hook up. Then their story goes completely, violently off the rails.

It’s hard to watch young people make stupid choices for the sake of romance, whether in reality or in fiction. And there’s not necessarily anything new to be learned that Shakespeare didn’t cover in Romeo & Juliet 400 years ago. I’m not sure what the moral of Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat is.

Alaya F is an interesting performer, even when the characters she is given to play are kind of shallow. Karan Mehta gets some slack as a new actor, but some of the choices he makes are strange, such as Harmeet’s annoying laugh. Better guidance from Kashyap could’ve helped.

Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat just didn’t work for me.

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