Bollywood's latest offering I Hate Luv Storys only proves that Karan Johar’s assembly-line production of romantic comedies has suffered a breakdown, unable to churn out even a featherweight boy-girl entanglement entertainer.
Director Punit Malhotra took upon himself the task of rolling out an undernourished idea for over two hours until an all-conquering love hobbles into the sunset (or drowns in glycerine tears), leaving no trace of what the tamasha (traditional Marathi folk art form, often with singing and dancing widely performed by local or travelling theatre groups) is actually about. It seems as if the producer (Johar) instructed his director to hammer a round-pegged story into a square hole to reiterate the objectives of the “Karan Johar school of films”.
Jay Dhingra (Imran Khan) and Simran Sharma (Sonam Kapoor) are just two good-looking youngsters thrown into a good-looking environment to act out a clichéd storyline but in, well, good-looking clothes. To lend the film some semblance of intelligence, Malhotra has chosen his lead characters to be a part of familiar surroundings - a film industry reeking of mushy love stories. He has even thrown in, for good measure, a character (Raj, played by Sameer Dattani) modelled after Karan Johar. To run tabs at a popular bar and run away from his family business, Jay is forced into assisting romantic filmmaker Raj who is joined by art director Simran.
While Jay hates the mush that makes a mushy story, Simran likes to wallow in the tosh. Eventually, of course, they fall in love filmi style, complete with Simran leaving her perfectly dumb fiancé.
With a film that has a predictable ending, it’s the director’s responsibility to pour in enough sugar to make teen girls weep in the cheap seats and their gnats-in-shining-armour boyfriends to extend Brut-sprayed armpits.
Instead, Malhotra has spent precious time making the film on the editing table, mixing, all too often, long shots and extreme close-ups. He has also forgotten that the young have their agonies and grown-ups - throwing worries to the wind and with a box of tissue paper on their lap - can find it amusing to watch star-crossed lovers cross mental machetes.
As for acting, Sonam Kapoor needs to realise that family antecedents (daughter of Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor) are not good enough to survive in the film industry... it’s more important to deliver dialogues naturally and hold the attention of viewers with expressions.
But, of course, actors are as good as their directors want them to be. Imran Khan, with his sheer energy and wit, looks promising.
Malhotra’s litter-free paradise doesn’t catch viewers off guard, let alone trigger an interest in love stories. In fact, it’s more of a return to half-hearted melodramatic drivel directed with messy efficiency, drowned in jingle-jangle music and killed by tedious dialogues. Memorable footage from hit Karan Johar films and two actors inspired by the on-screen mannerisms of Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee/Kajol don’t serve as a pick-me-up.
I Hate Luv Storys gets heavy on the eyelids as early as the first 30 minutes.
