Lousy Love: Yesterday, Today

Socha Na Tha and Jab We Met loudly proclaimed the arrival of a director to look forward to- Imtiaz Ali- who knew the pulse of today's youth too well and who made movies without any pretensions whatsoever. His journey to fame was a quick one and suddenly the whole of Bollywood wanted to work with him. But, Imtiaz Ali is no Karan Johar to keep his identity intact, a fact that you realize as you sit through the tiresome "Love Aaj Kal"

The good thing about his last 2 outings was that they had Imtiaz Ali written all over them. Sadly, Love Aaj Kal has every other director's name written all over it but Imtiaz Ali's. Throughout the movie, you get a sense of deja vu, a "been there, seen that" kind of feel and it reminds you of the escapist romances of the 80's and the 90's- the kind that were helmed by directors ranging from Rahul Rawail to Raj Kanwar to Yash Chopra to Adi Chopra to Kunal Kohli to Karan Johar to Siddharth Anand!

A tiny spark of Imtiaz's intelligence can be sensed in the scene where Saif and Deepika chat over phone after they part where Deepika tells Saif that she never used to get drunk but did not mind Saif doing naughty things to her since that's the only time he would do something! Making Saif play the young Rishi Kapoor in the flashback scene is another winner (you can see Saif struggling with his Punjabi, measuring upto the talented Rishi Kapoor is no mean task!). But at the end of the exasperating double love stories, all you end up with is double disappointment. As you see Deepika Padukone confronting Rahul Khanna (who looks surprisingly out of place) with her love for Saif Ali Khan, you cannot help but hooting since it is the most poorly conceived and directed sequence and the one that purports to be the most important.

The whole San Fransisco episode serves to add to your irritation and that was a track that could have been easily avoided. Even the dialogues get preachy after a point, which is so uncharacteristic of Imtiaz! The film also suffers from lack of "real" actors- Saif Ali Khan tries hard but ends up repeating his "Hum Tum" act, sans either the vibrance or the vigour. Deepika Padukone needs to start all over again- she is the biggest disappointment here. Even an actor of Rishi Kapoor's stature struggles with his ill written role and fails to make an impact. Newcomer Giselle Monteiro who plays Harleen Kaur has screen presence and Neetu Singh Kapoor appears in the climax as a whiff of fresh air and justifies sitting through this moronic 2 hours 20 minute no- show.

Pritham is surprisingly off key with the songs- Chor Bazaari is innovative and has been picturized very well. Twist and Aahun are ho hum and there is no comparison to that winner of a sound track in Jab We Met. Ali also gets his song placement totally wrong- they serve as speed breakers in the narration which is not right in the first place.

The only person who does not disappoint is probably Nataraja Subramanian whose camera captures London, Delhi and San Fransisco like never before. But good camerawork cannot definitely save a film that is bad on all other counts! Saif and Dinesh would have earned enough thanks to the pre release hype that LAK created but it is a fact that the film fails to live upto the expectations it created...