Rating : ⭐⭐
Genre: Romance
Year: 2025
Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes
Director: Aarti Bagdi
Cast: Vaani Kapoor, Fawad Khan, Parmeet Sethi, Lisa Haydon, Riddhi Dogra
Kid rating: PG
The question I have post-watch is: where’s the rom in this rom-com?
You’d think that with a pair as good-looking as the two leads, the romance would be rife. You’d be wrong. Director Bagdi manages to strip this film of any glimmer of romance; the spark between the leads wouldn’t even light the kindling on a cold winter’s day.
Vaani Kapoor is Gulal Bajaj – a girl who’s primary aim is to avoid getting married. She’s broken off two engagements already and is well on her way to her third. Fawad Khan is Abeer Singh, a London restauranteur who’s looking for new talent via a culinary competition in Jaipur.
Gulal escapes from a homely Gangaur Pooja, dons a pair of boots and a leather jacket on top of her ghagra choli, shimmies down the balcony of her room, shows up at the competition, whereupon she loses the jacket and the boots, sings and dances to a melodious ditty AND also wins the competition. Easy-peasy.
London dreams secured, she bids goodbye to daddy dearest and peppy Nani (Farida Jalal, because who else) and zooms her way to London first-class. Here, in the company of cousin Ruchi she parties into the wee hours of the night, forgetting to show up for her chef training job – the reason she came to London in the first place. So much for those dreams.
Understandably the boss, Abeer, is upset. But then this is a Bollywood romance. The rest of the film’s story is left as an exercise (in imagination) to the reader. Please do not use your entire brain in doing this.
If you’ve read this far, you must have gathered that I’m not a fan of this film. I love easy-breezy romance as much as the next person, but throw me a bone. Some romantic tension, a little witty banter? No sign of any of that in this film! In the initial scenes when the two meet, their supposedly flirtatious lines were so boring, I almost went to sleep.
There is zero development of romance. One moment they are in love, yet two minutes before they apparently were not! Gulal happily traipses past Abeer and his close friendship with lovely work associate Laila (Lisa Haydon) with nary a trace of jealousy (or any other emotion). Abeer must rescue Gulal from various sticky situations but I couldn’t discern anything other that frustration in him. There is not a hint of any romantic feelings between the two until it’s full-out Bollywood luv-shuv.
To believe in any love-story one must at the very least have believable characters. Gulal’s character is an inconsistent mix of ditzy yet sensitive and intuitive, kind yet completely oblivious to another’s predicament, supposedly goal-oriented yet unwilling to put in any work to achieve said goals. She says a lot but does little; there’s no there there. Abeer’s character was fleshed out a bit better, but not enough to get invested in.
Then there is the long drawn-out nonsensical twist at the end. It came out of nowhere and made zero logical sense. If they did want to introduce a “problem” in the romance there were a 100 more believable ways to have done it.
I can’t fault the actors here though. Kapoor can do a lot better than ditzy – case in point Befikre. And Khan is a fine actor, so whatever (little) he does here is at the director’s direction. They both looked good – Kapoor in particular.
This film is based on a long-standing romantic trope – a trope I’m a fan of. Emma is a favorite read and Aisha was a lovely film. But Abir-Gulal executes this trope quite badly.
That said, if you’re in the mood for a brainless, flat romance, this one’s the ticket.
Kidwise: Clean.
