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Star cast: Nushrat Bharucha, Kartik Tiwari, Kiran Kumar, Fatima Sana Shaikh.
What’s Good: The fuzzy and the feel good romance is bound to soothe your soul.
What’s Bad: A rather clichéd and already seen story which drags long enough to test your patience.
Loo break: Immediately post-interval. You almost wish the interval hadn’t ended. And if you are a free spirited woman, I strongly recommend you to carry an analgesic.
Watch or Not?: If Sleepless in Seattle is the kind of film that wrenches your heart, Akash Vani is worth a shot!
User Rating:
When Luv Ranjan’s Pyaar Ka Punchnama released, it worked for its sarcastically and wittedly told story. I remember walking out of the hall, still laughing at Kartik Tiwari’s awesome 5 minutes of comical yet stellar women bashing! Ranjan comes back this time to narrate a diametrically opposite story. Akash Vani is all about college romance forced by circumstances to remain unrequited and is wound up quite shabbily in the climax.
A simple, homely girl-next-door Vani begins her journey at St Stephen’s College Delhi. There she meets Chandigarh ka rustic lad Akaash. Intense sparks clearly ignite between them quite early. A large part of the film’s first half focuses on Akaash and Vani romancing their way through English Honours classes at St Stephen’s Delhi, or while their hands are folded in prayer at Bangla Saheb and also in the dusty nooks and corners of Parathewali Gully. They are intimately in love, dating each other over midnight maggi, sweet shayari and ek pyaali chai. The typical of Sarson ke khet da pyaar sliced straight out DDLJ and Manali’s snow just adds a greater adorable charm to their teenage romance.
As college ends, and the two move into their separate walks of life, they briefly engage in a long distance relationship. While Akaash goes away to UK to pursue higher education, Vani is entrapped in a family crisis which forces her to end her four year long relationship with Akaash and marry the groom her father chooses for her. Akaash unable to gauge Vani’s helplessness and disgusted with her betrayal shuns their prized relationship unquestioningly, sulking in his male ego.
While Vani battles her pitiful marriage to a Satan like man, destiny decides to give Akaash and Vani another chance by getting them together again. Will Vani stand up for the man she loves against her family? And will Akaash fight to win back the love of his life?
Akaash Vani Review: Script Analysis
While expectations are sky rocketing high from Luv Ranjan, his story was clearly disappointing. The film which was directed towards the younger faction of the audience will surely not be able to please them, at least the urban audience. While the romance of Akaash and Vaani is quite impressionable, it is hard to buy that a girl educated at India’s one of the most premier colleges acts so dim wittedly. It is almost a blemish on the name of Stephen’s that they could not educate their students aptly to learn the most important value of self respect, which is factually incorrect. When Vani’s elder sister elopes to marry a man outside her caste, Vani almost acts like a martyr and marries the man her father chooses ending her four year long relationship with Akaash over a phone call. Even if you do manage to digest the break up, it is impossible to believe a 21st century woman marrying a man without getting to know him at all.
What follows is even more offensive! A young educated woman shrinks into the roles of a maid and a whore so numbly while her husband picks up every opportunity to fight with her and makes up by unreciprocated, thrust-on-her kind of sex night after night. Her docility will boil you up again and again. While as a woman, I was deeply insulted by such an archaic depiction of women, it must really anger the dignity of men to see them being depicted as nothing short of being barbaric and sex-hungry creatures.
While the ending does show a more emancipated versions of the characters which you have been looking for a long time, the story fails you for its own large and unbelievable loopholes. The runtime of the film makes you weary, wishing it would end soon.
Akaash Vani Review: Star Performances
Luv Ranjan did cast smartly for his film. Despite a terribly edited film, with a script full of loopholes, I salute Nushrat and Kartik. Their on screen chemistry makes the characters believable. Their romance is full of naïve-ness and yet possesses the strength to last beyond imposing social institutions, time and distance. The film is their story and they wonderfully lend to each scene an enthralling chemistry. The one scene towards the climax where Nushrat and Kartik break down at a station speaks volumes of their impeccable sense of timing at emoting right and their neat execution of feelings which they are meant to portray. At no point do they fail to live up to their roles, neither do they over do the melodrama keeping it just rightly blended. Despite a script, that could have been much better, Nushrat and Kartik are certainly the working wheels of this film and both deliver a spectacular performance in their own right.
Akaash Vani Review: Direction, Music & Technical Aspects
Luv Ranjan’s work is however disappointing. From the man who made Pyaar Ka Punchnama, Akaash Vani doesn’t match up to the stature he had created for himself. The fresh music however does its best to make up for the lazy editing that added greater suffering to both the film’s fate and the audiences.
The tracks enmesh well with the youthful romance in the film. The lyrics of each song are wisely penned down and reflect the wit of Luv Ranjan. The tracks obviously reflect the higher octaves of romance quotient which makes the music of the film extremely endearing. Shafqat Amanat Ali’s Tera Mera Naam is the most prized package of the film’s music. Shot at picturesque locations, be it the bright yellow mustard fields of Punjab or the white snow capped hills of Manali, the film emits various hues and shades of myriad colors associated classically with love and adds on to the romantic feel of the film.
Akaash Vani Review: The Last Word
The film makes for a decent one time watch. Watch it just for the beautiful and enchanting chemistry of Nushrat and Kartik! A double thumbs up to the duo.
Akaash Vani Trailer
Akaash Vani released on 25th January, 2013.
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