Film: Jab We Met

Director: Imtiaz Ali

Cast: Shahid Kapur, Kareena Kapoor, Kiran Juneja, Pavan Malhotra, Dara Singh, Saumya Tandon, Tarun Arora, Divya Seth.

Banner: Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision

Rating: 3/5

This film truly belongs to Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur. While Kareena (Geet) is brilliant as the boisterous girl from Bhatinda; Shahid (Aditya) does a super job as the clam, composed and heartbroken man.

This love story is packed with excitement and laughs all thanks to Kareena’s character. The first half of this laughathon romance zips past so fast that you’re left craving for more and more. However the pace slackens in the second half and you tend to get withdrawal symptoms by not seeing the “first half Kareena” on screen. Nonetheless, after Socha Na Tha, Imtiaz Ali definitely delivers a class and refreshing film and manages to extract the most out of his actors.

The story goes thus… Aditya is a rich industrialist, who has just been ditched by his girlfriend. Add to that his mother eloping with another man and his father passing away. Things couldn’t have been worse for him. Heartbroken and distraught, he leaves the city and boards a train.

In comes an adorably talkative girl – Geet, who is on her way to Bhatinda. Full of life and dreams in her eyes, she plans to elope with her boyfriend (Tarun Arora) as soon as he reaches home.

Geet bugs Aditya to the core with her chitter chatter and in the course of the night, he decides to get off the train. Not finding him on his seat, Geet gets off the train in order to look for him. And in this hide and seek, they miss the train.

What follows is how Aditya helps Geet reach her home in Bhatinda. In the course of the journey, they know all there is to know about each other courtesy Geet of course and her non-stop talk.

Kareena’s dialogues are relatable, funny and ones that have you hooting all the way. Hardly has one got over, that we are thrown another witty one. Dialogues like ‘Main apni favourite hoon’ and ‘Teri Maa Ki’ are just a couple out of a basket-full or should we say mouthful?! Full marks to Imtiaz Ali for a brilliant story, screenplay and dialogues.

Shahid, on the other hand, gives a brilliant performance, which can well be his best till date. He exuberates confidence and panache through out. Though his character is not as lively as that of Kareena’s, he stands tall in front of her with his restrained performance.

Notwithstanding the happenings in their personal lives lately, Shahid and Kareena share an amazing chemistry.

The dampner in the movie are definitely some of the song sequences and the shoddy special effects. As far as the songs are concerned, apart from Nagada and Mauja Mauja, none really stay in your head for too long and you wait for them to get over in order for the story to progress.

Coming to special effects (or the lack of it), an eye-soar is the taxi sequence when Geet and Aditya are zipping from one station to another in a cab. In between this sequence, the train that we see is very evidently a toy. Moreover, Kareena’s hair strands look hap-hazard and out of place. In this sequence one gets a déjà vu of the 60s and 70s era films, where actors were shown driving a car with an evidently fake background. One wonders why this was not looked into by the director.

That apart, while the end is predictable (and happy of course), due to Kareena’s change of personality in the second half due to circumstances, the charm is lost somewhere. A wee-bit trim in the second half may work for the better.

The other characters in the films Kiran Juneja (Geet’s mother), Dara Singh (grandfather) and Pavan Malhotra (uncle) play their parts well. The introduction scene of Dara Singh is hilarious and Pavan Malhotra does well as a ‘pukka’ sardarji.

Divya Seth (Aditya’s mother) is wasted in the film. Sans a single dialogue, one wonders why she was there in the first place.

Since the release of the movie was preceded by a lot of hype and hullabaloo, it will definitely work in its favour. While initial reports suggest that the movie has taken an okay opening, positive word of mouth will be able to drive more people to the theatres over the weekend. This one is worth a watch!