Last week I went to see “I Hate Luv Storys”, a movie taking inspiration from superhits like Love Aaj Kal and touting itself to be the latest offering in the different-from-past-century-love-stories genre. IHLS and their ilk are trying to differentiate themselves from run of the mill love stories through some specific tactics and plot devices. These include taking potshots at contemporary Bollywood, reminding the audience of Bollywood love story cliches, singing songs that deride traditional love stories, and actors and actresses whose online and offline persona is oh-so-2010, detached from their Bollywood past, attempting to stand tall in the global landscape of modern Bollywood movies.
Well, I HATED the movie. Sure it has eye candy value, pretty stars and reasonable acting, fantastic locales and dresses, and the odd joke or two about lesbians and gays, about contemporary Bollywood, the occasional humor by first time side actors (Jai’s best friend is as plain speaking as Pratik Babbar’s character in Imran’s first movie), but the essential question kept bugging me as the movie plodded through: Where’s the bloody plot? Where? Under Imran’s chocolatey-goofy looks? Inside Sameer Soni’s strange expressions? Simply put, there is NO plot to speak of in this movie. Its almost as if the entire movie is targeted towards some kind of context-less, robotic, teenage and youth audience whose goals in life include making fun of everything contemporary and past, and living life in the moment with branded entertainment and clothes.
Even then, the movie would have made sense if it didn’t fall step by step, in the second half, into the very cliches, the very platitudes, the very hackneyedness that it tries to criticize and question in the first half. In the second half the director simply ran out of things to do, and forced a strange New Zealand angle, making Sameer Dattani look even more forced and pathetic than in the first half, making Imran and Sonam stare at each other inscrutably and making the audience almost heave a sigh of relief when he finally proclaims his love in the end, in the most cliched manner possible.
I would go so far as to say that I felt my heart yearning for the very classic contemporary Bollywood movies this movie tries to spoof/criticize/whatever else it does. The first few scenes of the movie are a montage from DDLJ, Hum Tum, and various other Khan classics, and I daresay, you realize how golden those movies are, when IHLS finishes. IHLS is so dull it makes Rajneeti, with all its hamming and cliches stand head and shoulders above it.
Now i need a good tightly scripted, gripping movie to cleanse my palette of all this pink bubblegum BS
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