{"id":5331,"date":"2014-02-09T16:11:52","date_gmt":"2014-02-09T21:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/?p=5331"},"modified":"2017-07-01T17:25:13","modified_gmt":"2017-07-01T21:25:13","slug":"movie-review-hasee-toh-phasee-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/2014\/02\/movie-review-hasee-toh-phasee-2014.html","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review : Hasee Toh Phasee (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"Rating : Below Average (2.5\/5)<\/strong>
\n Genre : Romance\/Comedy<\/strong>
\n Year : 2014<\/strong>
\n Running Time : 2 hour 20 minutes<\/strong>
\n Director : Vinil Mathew<\/strong>
\n Cast : Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, Adah Sharma, Manoj Joshi, Sharat Saxena, Nina Kulkarni<\/strong>
\n Kidwise : G<\/strong><\/p>\n

This film is billed as a rom-com, but alas, it is neither. I did not like it. If you have pre-made your mind about seeing this film, read no further, since I will tell exactly you why you shouldn’t. You’ll have to go the theater with a sad face, and who wants to do that?<\/p>\n

Nikhil Bharadwaj (Sidharth Malhotra<\/a>) meets Meeta Solanki (Parineeti Chopra) briefly. She disappears and he moves on with his life , meeting and falling in love with Karishma (Adah Sharma). Nikhil is on the verge of tying the knot with Karishma when Meeta reappears. Chaos ensues.<\/p>\n

Going by the trailer, I was so looking forward to this film. That trailer<\/a>\u00a0is actually better than the film, since it takes all the good parts (few though they were) and strings them together. You’d think that a romance starring a good-looking young man and peppy Parineeti Chopra would succeed, but director Mathew manages the impossible: he sucks out all the spontaneity and the joie-de-vivre out of this film with a lazy, laggard screenplay.<\/p>\n

The first half of the film is SLOW. By the intermission, the hero-heroine have barely set eyes on each other. I for one, was still trying to figure out logistics, because this is a love-tale with large families included – one Gujju and one Punju. Hilarious right? Or so the director thinks. The play-by-play is exhausting, especially pre-interval, because it is spent in very slow build-up.<\/p>\n

For a romance to work on screen, there must be a reasonable lead pair (there is), and sparks must fly (they didn’t). No snap, no crackle, no pop. No oomph! Nikhil Bharadwaj and Meeta Solanki talk to each other in half-phrases, all raised eyebrows, and contrived situations. They might connect on cricket talk, and yes, we do see them gallivanting over to late-night eateries, where they split drinks, but I’m not sure if it goes any deeper.\u00a0Where is the love\/passion\/warm-fuzzy-emotion-thingy? Is this what a modern lovey-dovey pair looks like? Is this how the young talk and serenade each other now? And are they really this boring? Someone fetch me a pillow already!<\/p>\n

The lead pair aren’t very realistically defined. The guy owns and runs an event management company, so he is, we are led to believe, a somewhat pushy, street-smart Punjabi brat. Now Malhotra is many things, but he does not look like a rugged, jugadu<\/em> sort of a person. He’s got the Matt Damon kinda face – he looks like a nice person, a good guy. So, he’s a bad fit for this role. The girl is an IIT-ian, a female nerd, who goes to great lengths to continue her scientific research. But then, and this is where I have problems, this lady geek also very easily dons a backless choli<\/em> and lehenga<\/em> and becomes the life of the party – very inconsistent. Also, it’d have been nice if we had some evidence of her great brain-power, because all this supposedly smart person can do is get into mounds of trouble and run back to family\/look to the hero to extricate her.\u00a0The romance, such as it is, stems from the 2 person Pity Party – she is pitiful, and he pities her.<\/p>\n

I mean, I can picture what the director thought he was making : Jugadu<\/em> Punjabi Brat with Heart Of Gold meets Helpless Almost Bi-polar female Gujrati Nerd. And, and . . . (wait for it) Love Blooms! Unfortunately, this film is far removed from that vision, or very close (and really, I am not being sarcastic AND bitter), depending on your point-of-view.<\/p>\n

What worked? Very little. The songs are lovely. Some of the minor characters were very well-done – like Nikhil’s mom (Nina Kulkarni) who is a placid housewife with an unexpected talent for classical singing. Then there is the beat-bopping weirdo cousin who fancies himself the Almost Kanpur-ia Idol and has a thing for Meeta. Adah Sharma does very well as the we’re on-we’re off fiancee.<\/p>\n

This film is an exquisitely wasted opportunity; in the hands of a director who knew what he was doing, HTP could have been spectacular. As it is, it is a mildly boring snoozefest.<\/p>\n

Kidwise<\/strong> : Clean. As clean as it gets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rating : Below Average (2.5\/5) Genre : Romance\/Comedy Year : 2014 Running Time : 2 hour 20 minutes Director : Vinil Mathew Cast : Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, Adah Sharma, Manoj Joshi, Sharat Saxena, Nina Kulkarni Kidwise : G This … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":"","facebook_10233691416821117_190635594420624":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[186,76,166,17,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-186","category-bollywood","category-cringe-worthy","category-rating-g","category-romance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Rating : Below Average (2.5\/5) Genre : Romance\/Comedy Year : 2014 Running Time : 2 hour 20 minutes Director : Vinil Mathew Cast : Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, Adah Sharma, Manoj Joshi, Sharat Saxena, Nina Kulkarni Kidwise : G This … Continue reading →","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p45CAb-1nZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5331"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7292,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331\/revisions\/7292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/film\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}