Anjaana Anjaani Review

An escapist, sissy generation, the elders call us. "This generation" stops at nothing to avoid dealing with "real life" - including drink, dope, sex and even death - they rue. This, then, is a generation that doesn't easily get overwhelmed by scandalous shortcuts out of problems.

Which, as audience responses to Anjaana Anjaani's opening scenes show, is a little alarming. The protagonists of this film, Akash (Ranbir Kapoor) and Kiara (Priyanka Chopra), meet while trying to kill themselves. They try out different methods of suicide (and keep failing, of course - how else do they make it through the flick alive and singing duets?), and somehow, few seem to realize that it's not funny.

However, this is a Ranbir Kapoor film, and things don't stay dreary for too long. Anjaana Anjaani is a rom-com, and is all about how the hero and the heroine fall in love and learn a thing or two about how to meet life head on instead of running away. They set a final date for themselves to die, and meanwhile, set out to do stuff that they always wished they would before dying.

Despite the dark circumstances initially, the film sails to a more breezy mood. There's much casual banter, philosophy, dawned realizations, plenty of song, and overall, a lot of froth. And since there's almost no complication in the romance, it doesn't play with your head much.

However, a fallout of the new-age jazz in story-telling is that the uber-coolness is often overdone. So even though Akash's life has been turned upside down because of the stock market crash, and Kiara has just been fired from her job (at a cafeteria, by the way, so she's no millionaire), you find that the two seem to have enough dough to hire boats to the middle of the Atlantic and spend at Las Vegas.

Besides, this is not realism at its best anyway - Kiara's hair is never out of place, even while in hospital, and her super-minimal clothing seems to be her USP, in the first place.

The nicer, saner parts of the flick come in when Ranbir Kapoor is in the frame. He manages to elevate the level of maturity in every scene, and is particularly a good foil to the hyperactive and verbal-diarrhoeic character that Priyanka Chopra plays. The contrast between the nature of their performances is evident in the fact that between Kapoor's understated humour and Chopra's loudness, the former is easily the more superior.

Vishal-Shekar seem to have a stock set of tunes for each mood that they compose for. The music is good, though, and is among the movie's better traits. The slick visuals, too, conform to Siddharth Anand's usual standards of filmmaking.

If you're the multiplex-hopping kind, you won't miss this one. However, resist taking along people not from your generation - the jokes aren't meant to be enjoyed at family dinners.