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.