Characters transform through songs that include flashbacks and dialogues. A viral YouTube clip sullies relationships. The film relies on stale devices to propel the plot. If you’ve seen enough bad Hindi films (like I have), you’ll be able to predict every plot turn (like I did).īecause there’s not much here.
(Remember the Chekhovian gun, the GOAT competition?) You know the twist will allow the screenwriters to produce a series of sermonising scenes – it’s all in there, and it’s all been done before. You know that the first conflict will be resolved to produce a different conflict that will culminate in a rousing climax. You know that the twist will produce a conflict. More so for a simplistic film that, before the twist, takes refuge in stock characters and situations. But a film is more than a pamphlet: It can’t survive on ‘message’ alone. And it does all of that in a mainstream medium – a ‘normal’ cinematic world filled with laughs, romance, songs. It prompts a question as pertinent as ever: Who is normal – or what is normal? It probes our obsession with masculinity and, in that retrospective light, illuminates stark contrasts by making the hero a bodybuilder in a testosterone-charged town. The rest, going by the first 40-odd minutes, is not tough to guess.Įven with multiple and obvious foreshadowing, this is a good twist, as it attempts to tell a story stifling in the crevices of Indian society. But the girl wasn’t always a girl (“I’m a trans girl,” Maanvi tells Manu). But since Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is a ‘thinking’ Bollywood romance, it takes a detour (not a spoiler, the twist comes much before the interval): Boy meets Girl. Parental opposition (or any other flimsy conflict). Most mediocre Bollywood romances play out like this: Boy meets Girl. (It’s a pattern that recurs throughout – any kind of complexity, or hesitation or confusion, is smoothened over by a song.) You know the next drill: they hook up and hook up – and hook up some more – and, you know this as well, they’re in love! If you’re still not convinced then, well, there’s a Holi song.
One meeting, that’s it, and the movie expects you to believe they’re a couple. They amble in the park later, where they talk about their pasts and families. They meet at a local restaurant (Back to Source, in case you’re interested – the film is more invested in plugging brands than creating convincing characters Nykaa is another example). He asks her out she hesitates, then agrees. Manu and Maanvi’s relationship, too, lacks the requisite spark. Which is tied to the film’s humour: characters straining to be funny, hoping to elicit laughs by hitting the most familiar – the most tired – beats.Īlso read: ‘Bob Biswas’ Doesn’t Know What Kind of Film it Wants to Be Drawn from broad stereotypes, they ride on our expectations. These are not people as much as (screenwriting) conceptions. He’s attracted to her like a true Bollywood hero: He gets awkward in her presence, eyes her from a distance, and plans to ask her out. She finds a job as a Zumba instructor in his gym (“Jatts Flex IT”). Meet Maanvi (Vaani Kapoor), who is everything Manu is not: attractive, suave, restrained. And what are romances if not the attraction of the opposites? So, there you have it. Now since this is a romantic comedy (of sorts), the film has a heroine. He’s also a loser: His only girlfriend left him for a man settled in “ Kanneda ”. Manu, as expected, is unrefined: He calls Zumba “Joomba”. Drinking protein shake, he shuts them out of the room. His two sisters, in a very aunt-like fashion, pester him for marriage.
You get all of that in the movie’s hero: Manu (Ayushmann Khurrana), a gym instructor, training for the ‘Gabru of All Time (GOAT)’ competition. Chandigarh, in popular imagination, means a few things: dudebros – low on brain, high on brawn – fixated on masculinity. With a title like Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, director Abhishek Kapoor expects you to enter the theatre with a list of checkboxes, and he ticks them one by one. Some films create expectations some conform to them.