I LOVED IT!

“Ek tarfa pyaar ki taaqat hi kuch aur hoti hai ... auron ke rishton ki tarah yeh do logon mein nahin bat ti.” Yes, my love for Ranbir Kapoor is one-sided and I know the taaqat of it because it’s him and his films that help me go through a bad day or forget my problems, temporarily. “Super excited... going to watch bae” read my message to the boss just minutes before entering the theatre. If I was nervous walking in, I was weeping during the interval and in the end, I came out happy and proud. Every dialogue, song and frame… my RK owned Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. I have never had “naughty” thoughts about him... Ranbir for me has been the person I would just want to sit next to, talk, laugh and have the time of my life doing crazy things. Yes, KJo has given us two BFFs falling in love and living happily ever after before, but this time he tells a tale of two “bestest” friends being oh-so-close and connected, yet ending up being just friends. ADHM is all about friendship, it is about having that ‘guy’ friend who you want to be with because he gives you the ‘sukoon’ that nobody or nothing else can give you. It’s a film that teaches you that in life you always do not get everything and yet you accept it and be happy about it… only then can you relate to lines like “Tu ne diya hai jo/woh dard hi sahi/tujhse mila hai toh/inaam hai mera...”

If I went to watch ADHM for the first time for only Ranbir, the crackling chemistry between Ranbir and Anushka made me watch it again:

THE WEDDING SCENE: That expression on Ranbir’s face when he croons Channa mereya and Anushka’s stunned look when she realises that he is in love with her. Ranbir saying, “Aaj mere awaz mein dard tha? Mohabbat thi? Kiske liye tha? Jaanna chahogi?” Anushka nods and Ranbir aims directly with “Jaanna toh padega!”

I MISSED YOU, YAAR!: When Shah Rukh Khan says the “Ek tarfa pyaar” dialogue and Ranbir dashes out to make a call to Anushka and she says, “I missed you, yaar!”

AT THE DINNER TABLE: The dinner table scene with Aishwarya, Ranbir and Anushka starts off light and easy, but ends up with Ranbir telling Ash, “Tumhein pakad ke rone waali nahin, kuch aur feeling aati hai”, while looking at Anushka directly, saying nothing and yet so much.

THE TITLE TRACK: Arijit Singh’s voice, Amitabh Bhattacharya’s lyrics and Ranbir’s light-brown eyes. Enough said! 
THE LINES: From the filmi “Pyaar aur dosti ka ajeeb rishta hai, pyaar hero hai aur dosti, heroine…dosti marr rahi thi aur pyaar dosti ke akhri waqt tak saath rehna chahta tha, yeh uska haq tha!” to Ranbir cheekily telling Lisa Haydon, “I always stand up for you”, to the philosophical “Mohabbat karna hamare bas mein nahin hai … uss mohabbat se door chale jaana … woh hamare bas mein hai.”

KJo REVISITED: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna to Kal Ho Naa Ho... it’s all there in ADHM! #TeenageMemories

Pramita Ghosh

LISA LOL!

What works for me in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil is the humour. The way in which it manages to trivialise every situation with super fun dialogues that turn them into LOL moments. The fun first half (well, the fun stops there) and the crackling chemistry between Anushka and Ranbir alone make the film paisa vasool. The references to typical Bollywood dialogues and scenes (think the chiffon-clad Anushka dancing in European locales a la Chandni or THE airport scene) are fun too. The icing on the comic cake is Lisa Haydon as Ranbir’s French girlfriend Lisa; every minute of her screen time is ROFL. The double date scene in the restaurant is the funniest in the whole movie, with Lisa drawling ‘vataavaran’ in her French accent, her fave Hindi word she’s picked up from Amitabh Bachchan in KBC!

Smita Roy Chowdhury 

I HATED IT!

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil is everything we need our cinema to stop being. And no, “This is Bollywood, cut it some slack,” is not a legit excuse for peddling high-decibel gilded trash anymore. Here are some of the biggest peeves I had with this film that is leaving so many people’s popcorn tubs salty and soggy.  

RANBIR KAPOOR AS AYAN 

Ayan is the reason boys and girls can never be friends. Not because one of them eventually falls in love, but because the boy is incapable of understanding a simple word — ‘No’. Anushka’s Alizeh makes it crystal clear that Ayan may be her “jigra” but he just doesn’t cut it in the toe-curling department. In a very cute scene where they are smushed together under one blanket in the cold, she tells him I see you as my best friend, one who will be with me always. “Aren’t you attracted to me?” he asks. Nope she says. 

And that makes him angry. Angry enough to come to her wedding, give her the double finger, and wish death upon the man she loves and is marrying in a few minutes. “You should die too,” he says bitterly. “Because if I can’t have you, no other man should.” Male entitlement much?! Isn’t this exactly what men who throw acid on women who turn them down say? 

Later, when Alizeh is divorced and dying, she lets Ayan back into her life, she needs her buddy at this painful time, we understand. And what does our hero do? Serves her tea and a hot water bag and tries to kiss her, begging this woman with stage 4 cancer to love him like a lover, not a friend. Of course she throws him out of the house in the middle of the night. 

ANUSHKA SHARMA AS ALIZEH

She’s just a mean girl in the garb of a cool girl. She takes Ayan under her wing and they have this great buddyhood going (which makes the first half still bearable) but come to think of it, why would anyone fall for a girl who behaves this horribly?! She cruelly mocks Ayan for being a bad kisser, calls his girlfriend a gold-digging prostitute but totally mooches off him in Paris, and has no qualms stringing along a poor doctor her dad has set her up with while she pines for Fawad Khan’s Ali and snogs random strangers at bars. Since when did heartbreak become a licence for meanness? 

AISHWARYA RAI AS SABA

She’s the modern-day Chandramukhi who takes in Ayan-the-Devdas after Alizeh-the-Paro gets married. Divorced and happy and smoking hot, Saba seems to have it all — a successful career in Urdu shayari in Vienna (!), a stunning house (I wonder what poetry paid for that!) and sexy times with a cute boy (Ranbir). But this is shudh desi Bollywood, so fall in love she must. Sex without sachcha pyaar? Tauba tauba!

SHAH RUKH KHAN AS TAHIR

He was there for barely a few minutes but turned out to be by far the most offensive character, reeking of male entitlement masquerading as beintehaan mohabbat. His Tahir thinks nothing of spouting innuendo-laced lines before his ex-wife (Saba) and the man she’s seeing now. “Let her sleep a little so that I can come in her dreams.” Yes, that’s what he tells Ranbir and the poor sod just stands there like a goof. Tahir’s message? She’s been mine once, so I can say whatever I want to her and about her. Boundaries? What boundaries? I’m a man, remember? 

P.S.: What especially irks about ADHM is that it is directed by Karan Johar. The same man who produced a mature buddy film like Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, where Imran Khan doesn’t dissolve into catatonics when his pal Kareena Kapoor doesn’t love him back. The same man who produced Kapoor & Sons, which showed the lives and loves of real people, not cardboard caricatures. The same man who threw his weight behind a little film like The Lunchbox that left such a lovely aftertaste. If there is anything that one discerns from ADHM it is that Karan Johar should give up directing his brand of beautiful trash and concentrate on using his heft to produce his brand of progressive cinema. 

Samhita Chakraborty

FAWAD OH FAWAD!

Clint Eastwood was the “Man with No Name”. Fawad Khan is now the “Man Who Can’t Be Named”. Overnight, the industry’s newest sensation has become a Bollywood pariah, conspicuously absent from fellow star “reviews” on social media where even Lisa Haydon’s cameo is being singled out for praise. There’s not even been a whisper for DJ Ali aka Fawad Khan. 

But on Monday morning, the only reason I went to watch Ae Dil Hai Mushkil is the reason the film has been in a whole lot of mushkil. Yes, I have been a Fawad fan right from that first smirk, that first smile, that first aadaab in Zindagi Gulzar Hai… and nothing is going to change that. Yes, he had less than 10 minutes on screen, but those 10 minutes re-established why I had fallen for the man in the first place. Even in a severely truncated role, Fawad makes his Ali a flesh-and-blood character… a man with faults and foibles, a man who can’t hold on to the woman who loves him so crazily… but still someone who makes you invest your emotions in. 

And where do I start? That sexy carefully careless mop of hair? That lopsided smile? That OMG vision of him in a white almost see-through kurta? That look in his eyes when he says “qubool hai” to Anushka’s Alizeh? That scene where Ali and Alizeh get intimate by the window in Vienna? Those “cutie-pie” moves in Cutiepie?  

And when “DJ Ali” smiled that half-smile somewhere towards the end of the film and didn’t appear again, my heart did a flip-flop. So long, my “zaroorat” and “khwaish”… till we meet again.

P.S.: No, we aren’t shutting down our “Fawad Melts Our Ovaries” WhatsApp group! Fawad exists even beyond Bollywood.

Priyanka Roy

I am a girl and assume that a girl I haven’t even met is a gold-digger because she wears short clothes. Then I get on the jet plane of the same person whose girlfriend I dissed as a gold-digger and fly off to Paris and demand that said guy pay for my drinks; but then I am his BFF. Also, I get men being able to cry and all that but perennially weeping and blubbering men are as annoying as forever-weeping women, and this film was full of them. That and the fact that every time I thought the movie was going to end it began again, was all that stood out for me in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. 
But then, the one reason I sat through the torture that is ADHM was because of one man, Fawad Khan... and he was golden. Of course my breath caught the minute I glimpsed his leather jacket-clad self with artfully ruffled hair grooving to the beats he was making on the console. And then he looked up with those eyes and the headache-inducing first half was forgotten. He had a tattoo on that delectable neck! Then that Cutiepie song happened and he was in a white kurta and black shades and my heart stopped. I may have made a few strangled noises but I don’t think anyone heard. 
Many people claimed that they could relate to the film, well I did too, especially that place where Ranbir asks Anushka if he smoked a cigarette and got a tattoo whether he would have the same appeal as Fawad did, and she looked at him with pity. As. If. And if my heart did break while watching the film, it was only because Fawad “meri khwaish hai” and I won’t be seeing him on the Bollywood screen, probably ever again!

Chandreyee Chatterjee

SRK, ONE OF 3 BEACONS IN AE DIL... GLOOM

I grew up filling the ‘Favourite Movie’ section in slam books with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Back when I believed pyaar dosti hai. And I still do. But then, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil had me tear my hair out. No, I didn’t like the film, and I voiced it out loud as soon as the screen went blank for the end credits. And, seeing that I’m a bad-film sympathiser, this coming from a KJo fam-dram lover like me for a film by him... SUCH HEARTBREAK!

Ranbir Kapoor deserved one tight slap to hit the point home that a No means No! And that, if he weren’t that good-looking, he’d be a certifiable creep. It took an unnecessary cancer angle for him to finally understand that “Bro... you’ve been friendzoned and you need to stay there!” 

If it weren’t for the three saving graces in the film I’d have stomped out demanding my money back...

1) Aishwarya Rai Bachchan looked Stunning. So doing the aadaab to everyone I meet and the “zaroorat-khwaish” routine too!
2) Shah Rukh Khan, who drew the loudest cheers from girls sitting in a swanky hall. Louder than that reserved for the third beacon in this gloom... 
3) ...Fawad Khan. I clutched my partner’s hand as soon as DJ Ali made an appearance to a “dhikchik dhikchik” background score. The role was perfect for him — (I’d gladly dance to his tunes any day!) —  and his look... the beard, the tattoos and that hair. And then he danced too! I’d gladly exchange Prince “Vikku” from Khoobsurat for a moment by the window stroking DJ Ali’s beard. Oh and wait — he’s a bad boy?! What’s not to like?

What hurt most though was when realisation hit me within three seconds of his appearance, once the cheers drowned, that there would be no more FK in Bollywood. Gone, back home, because his name is Khan from Pakistan.

Riddhima Khanna