Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Rating: 2 Stars (Out of 5)
First half: breezy but unabashedly banal. Second half: riddle
with toe-curling romantic mush. Sum total: a journey without maps that weaves
concentric circle around sweet nothings and empty prittle-prattle. That, in a
nutshell, is Imtiaz Ali's perambulatory rom com Jab Harry Met Sejal. It vegetation
you wishing they hadn't met.
A positive man who isn't getting any younger, a superior
girl who has a whole life ahead of her and a not-so-brief encounter in Europe
that takes the rootless duo across several picturesque locations add up to a
mothballed bromide that holds no real surprises.
To be sure, Jab Harry Met Sejal possesses the unfettered,
Sufi spirit of Ali's previous free-wheeling explorations of love and longing.
It, however, lacks the flash of ideational, empirical and tonal uniqueness that
livened up parts of those earlier films.
SRK's return to straight lover boy terrain - he plays a
louche but lonely tourist guide in Europe - does not yield the expected magic.
Anushka, in the guise of a young, chirpy lawyer looking for a lost engagement
ring, is high-spirited enough to push this plotless whimsy the length of for a
while. In the end, the task proves too heavy for her not to be weighed down by
its demands.
Not that there is not anything in Jab Harry Met Sejal for
hardcore SRK fans but those moments come only in fits and starts as he dons the
persona of the footloose Harindar 'Harry' Singh Nehra, who makes no bones about
his womanizing tendencies and even brags shamelessly on the subject of his
amorous conquests while admitting to the many ways he's got into trouble owing
to his rampaging libido. He is a superficially charming man all precise, but
not particularly likeable.
Sejal Zhaveri, on the other hand over, is a diamond
merchant's snooty daughter who does not think much of Harry's calling and loses
no opportunity to take jabs at it. Yet she has no qualms in taking offence when
the guy dismiss her as "nice, sweet and sister type". There is a bound
to shallowness.
The stunning locations are obviously eye-catching, but
surely surface gloss, star power, lively music and sparkling camerawork can
never be enough to turn a erratic and whimsical film into a convincing
two-hander about a pair of individuals thirsting for more than what their lives
have accessible them.
Harry seeks true love. Sejal, too, is on a voyage of finding.
Do they get what they are looking for? Not a opening in hell. So flabby is this
flighty film that it moves only in hops and skips. It never really takes off.
Jab Harry Met Sejal is cinema's equivalent of a shiny bauble
that glitter wholly in vain. Watch it only if you fancy a vicarious romp from
first to last Europe with an off-colour megastar wearisome hard to get going.
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