Befikre: A caricature in the name of Modern Love Story

Aditya Chopra tries to break his mould of a conventional love story maker to a contemporary love story maker with “Befikre”; well there is no problem in that but we have misconceptions of a modern or contemporary love story that it needs to be bereft of any emotions and passion, and that a modern day couple are only there for fun…

Taking that concept Aditya Chopra weaves in the quirky love story of Dharam (Ranveer Singh) and Shyra (Vaani Kapoor) who are two modern day individuals. Dharam the latest export from India who lands in the romantic city of Paris and meets Shyra, a free spirited Indian girl born and brought up in Paris, who calls herself a French girl, both start a casual fling which then gets converted to a live in and then a break up and then good friends, but do they ever find their real feelings for each other is what the movie explores…

Story by Aditya Chopra & Sharat Kataria and screenplay by Aditya Chopra himself takes inspiration from whole lot of Hollywood and Bollywood movies like My Best Friend’s Wedding, No strings Attached, YRF’s own Shudh Desi Romance or Band Baaja Baraat and Tamasha. In a nutshell there is nothing new in the premise neither in the screenplay, wherein a boy and a girl start a relationship with no strings attached and eventually they fall in love with each other and life gets complicated. Rather to add to the modernism the couple start making out at the drop of a hat as if they are sex maniacs, even the casting shows people kissing throughout. Where the story fails miserably is the lack of any emotional quotient in the scenes, rather the graph remains flat throughout the movie and never peaks and in the end you hardly care whether girl and the boy eventually remain happy ever after. The characters including the leads look like caricatures with no depth what so ever. In short the movie just falls flat and right from the word go and Aditya Chopra looses the plot with “Befikre”…

The dialogues by Sharat Kataria are the only saving grace in the scenes which makes you smile. The dialogues are cute, funny and at the same time contemporary, not heavy duty.

In a love story the most essential component is the chemistry, well unfortunately there is NO chemistry between Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor, though Ranveer Singh is in a comfortable space with the character where the fun part is concerned, but then it is a repetition of what he did in “Band Baaja Baraat” and it was novel at that time. Where Ranveer struggles in bringing the passion in emoting love, he is fine till the fun element is intact but when it becomes serious emotion Ranveer fails. Vaani Kapoor also gives a sincere performance but the chemistry with Ranveer. Debutant  Armaan Ralhan as Anya, Shyra’s fiancé gives a inhabited performance, being his first movie he looks and acts well, though it is the script which pulls him down.  Akarsh Khurana and Ayesha Raza who play Shyra’s parents do a good job, but they have nothing much to do. Rest of the foreign cast try to fit in but look confused.

Music by Vishal Shekhar is average and none of the songs have a recall value, something which is so opposite to an Aditya Chopra movie. Choreography by Vaibhavi Merchant has nothing new and original it is typical run of the mill…

It is the camera work by Kaname Onoyama which makes the movie worth a watch; he has captured Paris and France like poetry…

Aditya Chopra in his previous movies has shown brilliance in creating moments in his moments, who can forget the mother daughter scene or the pre climax sequence of DDLJ, or all the sequences of Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan in Mohabbatein, or the cute yet uncomfortable chemistry of the leads of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, but that brilliance is completely missing in “Befikre”. Rather you feel Aditya has made the movie in a rush and missed on all the crucial elements which have a USP of his movies. Aditya Chopra disappoints us with “Befikre” and it is definitely his weakest film till date. Rather after watching “Befikre”, you doubt whether it is the same director who directed DDLJ….

A huge let down by Aditya Chopra, I will go with Two Stars…

Movie Rating: (2 / 5)