The Fame (South City Mall) morning show starting at a yawn-toxicating 9.05am on Friday morning was almost 70 per cent full. Mostly high school and college students, in pairs or groups, seated together to watch “the film with the Tum hi ho song”. Producer Mahesh Bhatt, who has been churning out these crowd-pulling contagious songs since eternity, should have known that the youth would be pouring in to watch Aashiqui 2 and so he should have clearly given his ending a rethink.

While it’s unfair to reveal how Aashiqui 2 — the title font and the tagline (“Love makes life live”) are the only things common to Aashiqui (1990) directed by Bhatt himself — ends, you wouldn’t want a young boy or girl to watch such an escapist conclusion to such a heartfelt love story. Yes, you have an argument for it and you present it at the end of the film but sorry, that’s not enough. No, your ending didn’t need to be feel-good but it didn’t need to be that feel-shock either.

Till that point, Aashiqui 2 is quite a watchable date movie punctuated with some great music (Jeet Gannguli, Mithoon and Ankit Tiwari) and a very good female lead. It’s got some beautifully choreographed moments that almost hide the fact that the film has just a semblance of a plot. And that after borrowing from so many much-seen films. Maybe because it borrows from so many films.

There’s a little bit of Sur, a lot of Abhimaan, a smattering of Rockstar and even some good ol’ Devdas in Aashiqui 2. Come to think of it, if you take out the age factor, Aashiqui 2 is also very reminiscent of Anjan Dutt’s Ranjana Aami Aar Ashbo Naa.

It starts on a very similar note. A drunk rockstar struggling to take the stage. He is Rahul Jaykar aka RJ (Aditya Roy Kapur) who for some reason — if you decipher it, write to us! — has turned alcoholic and keeps emptying bottles of different colours and shapes. He almost runs over a girl named Aarohi (Shraddha Kapoor) in Goa who then makes him pick bhindi-tamatar from the streets. In return he makes her the top singing superstar of the nation.

But he keeps drinking. Yes, despite falling in love with this girl and helping her get her ‘chaand’, he is still in that bottle-emptying business. That liver wouldn’t make a very good pate.

Anyway, so she keeps rising up and he keeps plummeting down and they hold each other’s hand but you can only stretch your arm that much. And then there is that saggy third act and that irresponsible ending to round it off.

Shraddha is excellent. We also thought she was very good in Luv Ka The End and here she is the heartbeat of the film. Just look at how natural she is in what is her first real scene in the film — she is lying on her bed and thinking of what he had said moments back and her facial muscles are doing all the singing. Every time she cries in the film, her nose turns red. And those eyes they say so much. Especially in that moment when they get teary after he says “I love you” for the first time from behind the studio door.

Aditya is well below par. He is easy on the eye but when the mouth parts, he’s a big no-no. There’s not an iota of emotion in the dialogue delivery and what’s worse is that he can’t lip sync a song and for a film like Aashiqui 2 that’s damaging. Watch out for how he wastes one big moment after the other, including the one at the bar when he sits alone and watches the world celebrate her for the first time.

It’s the music which leads the show and how! Sunn raha hai starts the party on screen and then in the second half it’s that stuck-in-the-head-and-doesn’t-let-go Arijit Singh’s Tum hi ho that takes over and just keeps growing.

Yes, anti-alcoholism is an easy excuse to defend the ending but we need to know first why the man used to drink like a fish. Maybe Mahesh Bhatt, who in every other interview sells his old days when he passed out drunk on the streets and beaches of Mumbai, can explain. No wonder he is the Daddy on the phone!