That was FUN!!! It’s the first big budget big star romance in a while that has just been FUN. We’ve had fun action films, and tiny micro-budget rom-coms, but not big fun romances. With just a spattering of drama on top!
Ranveer makes the movie. Alia is fabulous too, and Jaya puts in an amazing performance, but if Ranveer wasn’t there to turn his character from a joke to a real person the whole film wouldn’t work. It’s such a tricky balance with “Rocky”, comic when he needs to be comic, but just plain fun when he needs to be just plain fun.
I would say about 70% of the movie is just FUN. It’s romantic and sexy and funny and bright and big and hopeful. And then there is a little bit of drama and a little bit of message just to make it filling. But mostly fun.
It’s also flawed in ways I found refreshing. The soundtrack is so-so (Pritam doesn’t do his best work by far), and the songs and nice but not Biggest Budget Ever nice. Very strong cast all around, but none of the regular players. Like, Shabana and Dharmendra and Jaya are amazing of course, but there’s no Pankaj Tripathi, no Aparshakti Khurrana, it’s just good solid character actors rounding out the rest. One of my favorite one scene actors, Navneet Nishan! The servant from Raja Hindustani! But see, that’s okay. A movie doesn’t need to be perfect everywhere, so long as it’s got a solid story and solid leads, the other things are just window dressing.
This is a New Karan in many ways, but also still the same old Karan. In Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, I felt like he was leaning into his darkness and drama too much, like he felt he had to hide the “fun” part. In this movie, all that “fun” is still there, just wrapped up in a smarter quicker more modern package.
This also feels like Karan trusting his actors in a way he hasn’t since SRK. He gave them the outline of their characters and the story, but it is clear that the Big people took that outline and ran with it. Truly, Jaya is magnificent. I’ve never seen her like this before. She alters everything about herself, even the way she walks is in character (graceless, stomping, unpleasant). The role is well-written, you could have cast someone far less talented to pull it off, and a different director might have not given Jaya the space to do what she was doing, but Karan trusted her and leaned into it. And then as previously mentioned, there is Ranveer. Karan gave him an almost impossible character, and then let him just find himself in the part. There’s so many moments and micro-expressions that could not have been directed, that had to have just come from the performance and Karan was there to capture them.
My biggest complaint is that there’s not ENOUGH of the film! I want more about almost every character, I want more scenes of everyone interacting, I want more backstory, I want flashbacks, I want EVERYTHING.
Second biggest complaint, Karan (as always) gave us 6 endings in a row instead of just ending the dang thing when it was time to end it.
