Opened: 21 February 2020
Cast: Kartik Aaryan, Sara Ali Khan, Aarushi Sharma, Randeep Hooda
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Producers: Maddock Films, Window Seat Films, Reliance Entertainment, Jio Studios
Rating: ★

“Aana toh puri tarha aana, ya toh aana hi mat...” pleads a befuddled Veer (Kartik Aaryan) to his lady love Zoe (Sara Ali Khan), which simply translates to “If you want to come, come in all your entirety, otherwise don’t bother coming at all.” No. This isn’t the script of a movie you streamed on PornHub, but rather a gem from Imtiaz Ali’s epic dud Love Aaj Kal 2.0. 

Don’t get it wrong, we’re all for contemporary takes on modern romances, but seriously, what exactly was writer Imtiaz Ali (Socha Na Tha, Jab We Met, Tamasha et al.) smoking? Whatever it was, you wished he’d roll up a few for you, so you have the patience to sit through this catastrophe of a movie that attempts to dissect how love and relationships have evolved over time, but put bluntly, fails miserably on all counts in whatever it was trying to achieve in the first place. 

To be fair, you’re already on shaky ground when you’re remaking a movie that’s just eleven years old and one that despite being successful, wasn’t great shakes either. Still, at least it had a unique freshness about it coupled with a banging soundtrack and an on form cast (Saif Ali Khan, Rishi Kapoor) to boot. Sadly, this movie has none of the qualities that made its predecessor pass muster.

Criss-crossing between a love story set in the 90s between Leena (newcomer Aarushi Sharma) and Raghu (Aaryan 1.0/essentially a younger version of the character played by Randeep Hooda), and a modern day millennial romance between career-driven, commitment phoebe Zoe and an idealistic, Sufi-spouting puppy dog Veer, Love Aaj Kal attempts to draw comparisons between how love as an idea has evolved and transcended over the years. The former version is recounted by Zoe’s older confidante (Hooda), who influences her choices by and large causing the plot’s central conflict – on whether she should aspire to fulfil her ambitions or toss it all away for matters of the heart.

There are only so many ways in which you can spin up an effective romance without succumbing to contrivances, but that still isn’t an excuse to make an over indulgent, yawn fest that takes itself way more seriously than it should. Heck even the most clichéd love stories have succeeded in giving us characters you root for, and if not, occasionally, actors playing well off of each other and sparking up the pre-requisite chemistry can even see a mediocre plot through. None of that happens here and by and large, the blame for that lies almost entirely with Ali.

So while his characters spout deep, philosophical lines about lost loves and caving in to the longings of the heart, none of that really comes across, because you never connect with their plight. So they’ll talk and talk and talk some more but it’s merely dialogue because all of it is so darned superficial and caricaturish. It doesn’t help that the editing is choppy at best and the movie drags on for a torturous two and a half hours; so you get scenes that go on endlessly or ones that will abruptly cut to the present where Zoe and Veer are sneaking off for a midnight rendez-vous, bang in the middle of an important scene set in the past between Raghu and Leena. Another big botch up is that Ali assumes that his audience have seen the 2009 film so he almost never attempts to explain why Aaryan is playing Hooda’s character, when the latter could have easily pulled of Raghu’s role without much ado. In the previous film Saif Ali Khan playing Rishi Kapoor’s character made perfect sense. Here audiences will just scratch their heads and wonder WTF is going on.

This slog of a movie might have, just might have been salvaged had its cast put their best feet forward but even here it’s just one big ham fest. To be fair, Aaryan is likeable in parts as Raghu, but as Veer he comes across as a bit of a sociopathic creep who pretty much stalks Zoe until she succumbs to his charms. Khan meanwhile, who was so likeable in her debut Kedarnath, is surprisingly the movie’s biggest flaw – she looks stunning, but is inexplicably artificial as she squeals her lines like she’s being held at gunpoint. What’s more, she never really makes you feel Zoe’s inner conflict or pathos, which is a shame, because her’s is essentially the central character and there was plenty of meat here for her to chew on; to explore for instance, why she’s repeating her mother’s mistakes and why she makes the choices she does stemming from a broken home. That she tries so desperately to be ‘woke’ and millennial begins to grate on your tits after a while too. Sharma is probably the most likeable of the lot – she has an easy screen presence but Ali never really gives her character the chance to develop. Hooda adds some depth to his character, but towards Love Aaj Kal’s final act, he seems to have given up too, probably because he became frightfully aware of the train wreck he’d accidentally lent his name to.

By the time it all wraps up you’re left so exasperated by a plot that lacks both in urgency and one that has little purpose, it doesn’t matter whether the movie has striking visuals (the climax shot in the Himalayas is probably an afterthought no doubt), or that it has a half decent soundtrack, you just want to head to the nearest exit, pee and get the f… out of there.

As such, for once, believe the release buzz -- Love Aaj Kal is a sh-t show from start to finish and is so irredeemably bad, it will put you off going to the movies for weeks.