Love Aaj Kal

My introduction to the film, Love Aaj Kal, was when I was running at the gym yesterday morning. The ticker running across the bottom of Indian MTV panned the film, decrying its modern themes, it's ho-hum dialogue, cheesy songs, over-acting by Saif Ali Khan (really, overacting in a Hindi movie?! really?!), etc. etc. etc. Escaping the heat of the mid-afternoon was my impetus to see the film, other than the fact that Rishi Kapoor, an acclaimed actor from the 1970s and of the famed Kapoor clan, is also in it. I marched my way to the Priya Market where the film is playing. The Priya Market is a shopping mall, complete with a Benetton, a McDonald's family restaurant (complete with door man!), bookstores, a gym, and music stores which I have yet to explore. I bought a premium ticket 175/Rs. (about $4.00) for the 3:10 show. I love assigned seating and in the balcony no less. Let me say this about Indian theaters: THX, blah blah ain't got nuthin' on the technology in Indian theaters!!!!! Mind-blowing, to say the least. No 3-D glasses required.

The movie is about Jai and Meera, two "modern" people who fall in love. For reasons familiar to many of us, their careers take them to different continents and they decide to "remain friends". yada yada yada. The other plot is traced back to 1965 when Veer Singh (Kapoor) and Harleen fall in love. The two love stories intertwine in their struggle to have love overcome all obstacles. It's basically a film that is about how love is transcendent and how it can connect people who may seem so different because of generational shifts. The latter is what I liked best about the film, I think. The movie doesn't try to extol the virtues of family, izzat, or any of the other themes that a number of Bollywood films always come back to. There are no judgments passed on Jai and Meera for the choices they make or the fact that they have pre-marital sex (there's a couple of kissing scenes too!). Instead, it focuses on how each of them tries to balance the practical realities of their individual dreams with their love for one another. There are only four songs too, if I remember correctly. The song, And We Twist, rocks!!!! So, given my like of this movie, why would critics dislike it so much? Is it because Saif Ali Khan plays the younger Rishi Kapoor? Is it because it is, unlike most Hindi films, plot-driven? I'll have some firewater and think about it tonight. But, it is good to see a movie like this as a teaser for films I have yet to see and that may be yet to be released.

The next movie I want to see is New York which is about the aftermath of 9/11 on Indian-Americans in NYC... I hear it's fantastic.