‘Love Aaj Kal’ Movie Review: Saif Ali Khan, you were right! Your Imtiaz Ali film was 10 times better than this Kartik Aaryan-Sara Ali Khan hotchpotch

Directed By
Imtiaz Ali

Produced By
Dinesh Vijan, Imtiaz Ali

Cast
Kartik Aaryan, Sara Ali Khan, Randeep Hooda, Aarushi Sharma

Bollywood Bubble Rating

What’s It About
Finding love was difficult back in the late 1980s and even in 2020s. Spanning two generations, the one half of the movie is about whether Sara Ali Khan considers her about-to-flourish career more important or does she prefer some unfettered love coming from Kartik Aaryan. The other half is about whether the ‘Kal’ ka Kartik Aaryan is able to realise his mistake of having left his childhood sweetheart, Arushi Sharma, stranded and himself moving on in life to become the successful Randeep Hooda. Confusing? Well, it sure as hell is. To clear your doubts, you’ll have to watch the movie, but I’m not sure whether that too will be of much help.

What’s Hot
Randeep Hooda. Definitely, one of the most underrated actors we have in today’s times, and I wish he did more films where we could see his charismatic and flawless acting onscreen over and over again. He may have had the least of screen space among the four lead characters, but he surely was the one who stood out the most. Hooda’s performance was on point, and his acting was effortless, which is what you expect to have in a love story. You don’t want performances where you can’t relate to the character. Randeep was believable every bit of it, so what he shit the bed a little in the end with a crying scene.

Arushi Sharma, the newbie, was damn impressive. Despite having the lesser screen space between the two actresses, she manages to grab eyeballs with her dialogue delivery and, above all, cute antics. She surely must get a lot more offers in the coming future.

Pritam’s music. Indeed, Imtiaz Ali knows music. All of his movies have some good songs, and this one too is no different. Songs like ‘Haan Main Galat’ and ‘Shayad’ stick on to you even after you leave the theatres. Thankfully the ‘Yeh Dooriyaan’ remake wasn’t a total rip off and was pretty much on the lines of the original, and therefore came out damn good.

The cinematography by Amit Roy is praiseworthy. He has used some techniques and angles which are quite contrary to what we have usually seen in films of the today. Some closeup scenes do look like selfie shots, but they manage to do the trick and give you something that you haven’t experienced before.

What’s Not
Kartik Aaryan has always been one of the most smooth actors who manage to get into the characters so well that it’s difficult to notice that he is acting and not actually living that person onscreen. Sadly, that’s not the case here with his character Raghu. His performance as Raghu is totally over-the-top and makes you wonder whether it was his way of method acting or was it the director who asked him to take the antics to this level of OTT. His other character, Veer still is good, yet the storyline doesn’t allow him to perform too much, and he is left with just some quirks of a geeky nerd ensemble.

Sara Ali Khan has been one of the favourites of people among the newcomers. However, she seemed to be trying too hard to play Zoe. Her character graph is good, but even her role has been made so over-the-top that at times you feel that she is hamming the lines and using hand gestures just to make sure the character looks believable when it actually isn’t. Her confused state of mind isn’t something that’s complain-worthy, but the way Sara has portrayed it onscreen makes her come out slightly as mentally unstable. I wish Sara Ali Khan had played it more subtly and gave the finesse she gave to her first film, ‘Kedarnath’.

Ishaan Chhabra’s background score is something that’s bland at places. You will be shocked to see that there are long gaps in the film where there is absolutely no background score, and you are left to patiently hear what the actors are saying. The long hauls and pauses, at times, take your minds off the story, which isn’t such a great thing for an intense love story.

Lastly, the story and screenplay by Imtiaz Ali are confusing. Yes, I never thought I would ever say that for an Imtiaz Ali movie, but what to do, this Love Aaj Kal is nothing when compared to his own Love Aaj Kal (2009) starring Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone. Even though he has tried to keep the essence of the same film, he has managed to create a hotchpotch in the middle, which makes one wonder – what was the need to make this reboot. Yes, we understand that every generation the definition of love changes, but in every generation the problems faced would be different. However, in this film the broken relationships and strangling love angles aren’t something that looks like a problem which happens on their own – it rather feels like they are self-inflicted. Well, the direction of the screenplay could have been much much better to give clarity to the audience as to what you’re in to watch.

Verdict
This is no Valentine’s Day release. The name may be Love Aaj Kal, but surely this will break more relationships than making them feel mushy about their romance. To add to it, the insult of having wasted a fantastic onscreen couple on Sara Ali Khan and Kartik Aaryan is too hard to let go off. I sincerely hope after a ‘Jab Harry Met Sejal’ and a ‘Love Aaj Kal’, Imtiaz Ali is back to his roots and stars giving people what they loved him always for – ‘Socha Na Tha’, ‘Jab We Met’, ‘Love Aaj Kal (2009)’, ‘Rockstar’, ‘Tamasha’ and the similar kind. Saif Ali Khan was totally right when he said his ‘Love Aaj Kal’s trailer was better than this one. Saif, not only is the trailer, even your whole movie was 10 times better than this Kartik Aaryan-Sara Ali Khan starrer. For this ‘Love Aaj Kal (2020)’, I’m going with 1.5 stars.

Box-Office
Considering the immense fan following Kartik Aaryan and Sara Ali Khan have, the film will open up to packed theatres, but the noir presentation will not get into the minds of audiences and soon, the film will start having negative word-of-mouth, which might not allow the movie to survive post the first Monday. For the sake of my love for Imtiaz Ali films, I would love that this prediction of mine goes totally wrong. Let’s wait and watch.

Watch Trailer

Also Read: ‘Shikara’ Movie Review: This Vidhu Vinod Chopra directorial fails to leave an impact

Prateek Sur

Born a Movie Buff, working as a Film Critique and enjoying life as a Bollywood Reporter.

Email: editor@bollywoodbubble.com Phone: +91 8355910465