Anjana Anjani Review

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra.
Director: Siddharth Anand.
Producer: Sajid Nadiadwala.

It celebrates suicide. Surely we cannot get more morbid. Also like Kites recently it is a contrived road film. Peepli Live also dealt with suicide as the looming finale`. It did not celebrate suicide. One may be tempted to say that the thematic content of a film is outside the purview of review. Even when taken you recoil to a celebrating statement of suicide – specially in a quality that has rejected suicide as a fact of the right to live. Our protagonists Aakash (Ranbir Kapoor) and Kiara (Priyanka Chopra) meet at a self anointed place to bid farewell to life. In retrospect you kick yourself fornot wishing their endeavour. You would be saved of the 120 minutes and more of juvenile giggles and poor chemistry.
Sombre death and fizz-filled rides across Vegas make for poor juxtapositioning. Neither the director nor the screenplay make up for this poor combine. It is truly difficult to appreciate a story that talks of a mirth filled lass and a disappointed lad heading out there to kill themselves as matter of factly as one would shop of bananas. It is not difficult to perceive that this couple are soon going to fall in love and going to revise their fatal intensions. The story thus leads to guess and throws a heavy burden of treatment. Here too the film fails and perhaps more miserably.
Director Siddharth Anand comes with a familiar background of stories without much credibility. Contextually they are also not vital for a film. The maker must sow some factor of interest or must bring a unique style in storytelling. The filmmaker this time round boasts of neither. It is permissible artistically speaking to defy standards and take a stance of non-acceptance by a large section. But to take a story which is a one-liner and go about dressing up a script with some more one-liners makes for a poor film and the film would serve a purpose if all students of cinema learn how, by example avoid the pitfalls of such ambition. It seems ambitious to make a film with one-line story. One can take recourse to the Bard: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
Poor scripting is somewhat overcome by some interesting cinematography by Ravichandran. You tend to notice even here some creeping half heartedness or lack of consistency. The story is strictly between its prime players Aakash and Kiara who make their date with death seem like a party. While Aakash blames it on the market crash, Kiara puts it on a jilted love story which totally lacks conviction. The movie is partially engaging thanks to the now expected credibility that Ranbir brings to his films. He will however have to choose his scripts with greater responsibility. Even the more cautious Shahid has paid a price with some indifferent films. Ranbir is too talented to be effected by one poor script. Here too he makes good of his outing. Priyanka reminds me of her Kriish days. Surely that could not have been the intent. At a time when our cinema is getting more stylized and more thematically expansive Anjana Anjani is indulgence without elegance, excursion without exercise, movement without motivation, telling without tale. In short not worth the troubles unless you want a poor conducted tour of the US of A.

L. Ravichander.