Love Aaj Kal (2009)

Love Aaj Kal ( Love Today & yesterday) has been one of this summer's eagerly anticipated movies, so off i went to the cinema to see what this film has to offer and here are my quick thoughts on the movie

Synopsis

Jai ( Saif Ali Khan) and Meera are a modern hip couple who live in London, when work and life opportunities arise, they decide to spilt up, however they still remain good friends, they even have a break up party. At the end of the party Jai meets Veer Singh (Rishi kapoor) who's suprised at Jai's casual manner over his split, he tells him him about how love meant a lot more in his days and in a series of flashbacks the love story between a young Veer (played by Saif Ali Khan in a turban) and Harleen ( Shweta Gulati), whom he sees and falls in love with at first sight, the movie then keeps going back and forth showing us Love Today between Jai and Meera and Love Yesterday between Veer and Harleen.

Anyway back to Love Aaj (Today) and Meena is settling into her life in Delhi, she and Jai retain a good friendship and they text and tell each other about their new loves, dates etc. Jai meets Jo and the two start dating, simultaneously Meera not wanting to be left out too starts dating her boss Rahul Khanna. When Jai's new girlfriend decides on a trip to India Jai goes with her and he takes the opportunity to revisit Meena, the two have a wild time together and indulge in a litle romance, the tables turn when they both appear at a New year's eve party and Rahul who is Meena's boss proposes to her, Meena then asks Jai what he thinks about his proposal, Jai is not forthcoming about his feelings and Meena asks him to get away from her sight never to return thus resulting in a second break up


My Nit Picks about this movie
As much as i watch fun brainlesss movies, this is one where i guess i actually tried to switch my brain on

I found the constant flashback scenes a bit unnecessary, a one time look at Veer and Harleen's relationship should have been sufficient to set their story up the constant flashbacks were distracting and confusing

I found this film regressive in a bad way, this is the year 2009 and a modern hip girl like Meera would have known what she wants, Meera's character doesn't seem to have a mind of her own, why did she have to wait till she had walked round the fire a whopping 7 times to realise she didn't love her husband as much as Jai, and since she and jai had broken up and he had a girlfriend of his own what was the need to seek his approval?

The characters emotions are laughable rather than cry and sympathise with the characters, i actually found myself laughing at their stupidity and self caused calamity

While i'm not a moralist in the strictest sense, Meera and Jai are rewarded for their selfish, self centred attitudes at the expense of other peoples feelings, in this case Rahul (Meena's husband) is left to bear the brunt of the love she still feels for Jai

I'm not even going to praise anyones performance here as i didn't like the story line too much at all, they all played their parts well but the entire thing crumbled in my eyes due to the storyline

Overall i was hugely disappointed in this movie the happy ending was so cliched and the whole thing as i've said was so regressive, like one of those melodramatic over the top love stories in 70's/80's bollywood

What i liked about this movie

The first half of the movie was much more bearable, i liked the way it showed Jai and Meera's post break up relationship and how they kept each other involved in their activities

Neetu Singh's appearance, although she appears in a cameo role

Deepika, even though her character as Meena is flawed and in some aspects has little to do which eventually reduces her character to the atypical filmi love girl, Deepika oozes screen presence and vah, vah, vah, so much beauty

The gorgeous locales and the songs, i don't care wherever Pritam copied it from, the songs were top notch, from the sweet sounds of Chori bazaar, to the fun dancey the twist and the super fun 'aahun aahun' which definitely has to be one of the biggest earworms of the year so far

Total Score: 4.5/10

I know people are going to compare this to Jab we Met but they're two different films in my own opinion, i was more in tune with the characters of Jab we met but i felt emotionally detached from the ones in Love Aaj Kal, at the points where they got emotional i actually laughed at them

Edited to Add

According to imdb Love Aaj kal is said to be based on the 2005 chinese film Zui Hao De Shi Guang

Ek Hasina Thi (2004)

Ek Hasina Thi (There was once a beautiful Girl) is the debut movie produced by one of my favourite directors Sriram Raghavan. I became aware of this movie through imdb, whenever i was researching a hindi film, it was always on the recommendations list, as it's one of the highest rated hindi movies on imdb so i decided to check it out.

Sarika (Urmila Matondkar) is an easy going, next door type girl who works at a travel agent, one day a gentleman by the name of Karan (Saif Ali Khan) walks into the agency and takes a liking to her
Sarika seems very reluctant towards Karan at first but as time goes on she warms up to him and they both fall in love
One day Karan leaves for his business trip, while away he calls Sarika and asks if she could host his friend for a few hours, Sarika being a good girlfriend welcomes his friend enthusiastically

After a short while Abhijit leaves Sarika's place telling her he needs to run some errands and would come back to pick up his luggage. A few hours after his departure Sarika hears on the news that Abhijit's is a gangster and has been murdered , a panicky Sarika calls Karan and Karan urges her to get rid of Abhijit's suitcase. On her way to get rid of the case Sarika gets confronted by the police and they search the suitcase
Sarika is taken into custody and questioned by the police, Sarika repeatedly denies knowing Abhijeet but fails to tell them she knew him through karan since he had urged her not to reveal his name. Karan provides Sarika with a lawyer who urges Sarika to plead guilty, sayin the judge might pardon her. Sarika pleads guilty but unfoutunately things do not go as planned and Sarika gets sentenced to 7 years in Jail. Finally Karan comes to visit her and he tells her she'll get used to life in Jail in a couple of days

It FINALLY dawns on Sarika that Karan had taken advantage of her, what would sarika do next? Will she spend her whole sentence in Jail or will she escape? What will she do to avenge what Karan had done to her? Find out when you watch 'Ek Hasina Thi'

Overall Ek Hasina Thi was an entertaining thriller movie,that's worth watching, it doesn't come up close to Sriram's second movie Johnny Gaddar, but as this was his first movie, he does a good job. Urmila gives a great performance and Saif plays the cunning boyfriend really well, he looks ultra gorgeous in this movie, i've seen him in many movies and i know he's a good looking guy but he really shines in ths one.
A down point of the movie is that it drags on a bit too long, Sriram could have wrapped the whole thing up in less than 2hrs, considering the fact it had no songs.

Total Score: 7/10