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Star cast: Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Aarti Chhabria, Panini Raaj Kumar, Satish Shah, Satish Kaushik, Kiron Kher, Delnaaz Paul.
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What’s Good: The story idea (inspired by Hollywood film Serendipity); the acting; music.
What’s Bad: The screenplay of convenience; the illogicalities; the staleness.
Verdict: Milenge Milenge will not meet with box-office success.
Loo break: Not really!
S.K. Films Enterprises and BSK Network And Entertainment’s Milenge Milenge (UA), inspired by the Hollywood film, Serendipity, is the story of Priya Malhotra (Kareena Kapoor) and Immy alias Amit (Shahid Kapoor). Priya, a choreographer, meets her Mr. Right, Immy, in Bangkok, exactly as predicted by a tarot card reader (Kiron Kher). Soon after she falls in love with Immy, Priya realises that he has lied to her and has feigned love for her as he had access to her diary jottings in which she had mentioned what the tarot card reader had predicted and also about her detestation of guys who smoke, drink alcohol and speak lies.
Crestfallen, Priya walks out of the relationship even as Immy tries to explain that he has begun to love her and would give up all the three bad habits which she so detests. However, Priya is unrelenting. She, nevertheless, gives Immy a chance when he tells her, the two were destined to be with one another for the rest of their lives. Actually, she gives him two chances by testing destiny in two different ways, the result of one of which is immediate and the result of the other would take any amount of time to be out. Immy loses the first test. In the second test, Priya writes her name and telephone number on the first page of a book on numerology and sells that book randomly to a secondhand books dealer; before that, she also asks Immy to write his telephone number on a Rs. 50 currency note and buys the numerology book with that note. She then tells Immy, if they were indeed destined to meet, they would get the currency note/book and contact one another.
Three years later, Immy is engaged to be married to Sophia (Aarti Chhabria) but no sooner is his marriage fixed than he begins to miss Priya and also feels, life is giving him signals to search for her using the second test. He begins searching for the book containing Priya’s number. Simultaneously, Priya finds a guy, Jatin (Panini), whom she decides to marry. But once she accepts Jatin’s marriage proposal, Priya, too, realises that Immy was the guy for her – and this, not just because life gives her signals. Priya, too, desperately sets out in search of Immy for which she has to lay her hands on the Rs. 50 note. Both, Immy and Priya, also use other methods to track each other down, but they fail.
As destiny would have it, both of them are scheduled to get married to their respective partners on the same day and in the same city, Delhi. What does destiny ultimately have in store for Priya and Immy? Do they meet?
The film has a nice story but the same can’t be said about the screenplay (Shiraz Ahmed) which has too many holes and flaws. For one, a girl in today’s times not willing to marry a guy who smokes and drinks alcohol seems a bit out of synch in view of the fact that leave alone boys, even girls have no qualms about smoking and drinking. Even these conditions may have seemed genuine but for that, the screenplay writer ought to have prepared a proper base. In fact, lack of proper base is a running problem throughout the drama as so many incidents don’t appeal because they’ve not been established properly or do not rest on solid bases. Ironically, when Priya gets engaged to Jatin and the two go out to a restaurant for dinner, the first thing the waiter is shown serving both of them is wine!
Although the film is all about destiny, the very base of the film is incorrect because Priya meets Immy not due to the fact that she was destined to meet him but because he happens to read her personal diary jottings in which she has written about the tarot card reader’s predictions. In other words, although it was the intention of the writer to have the audience believe that Priya and Immy meet due to the play of destiny – as predicted by the tarot card reader – they actually meet because of her diary. Now, the writer may have us believe that he chanced upon the diary due to the play of destiny but in that case, everything could be attributed to destiny. A better course would’ve been for Priya to spot Immy purely because of destiny and only thereafter, Immy getting hold of her diary – that is, if the diary had to be a part of the drama!
Immy tells his friends that although his relationship with Priya had started off as a joke, he had fallen in love with her. Soon thereafter, he tells Priya, his relationship was never a joke. And yes, it is not clear when Immy, as he himself confesses to friends, actually falls in love with Priya.
Again, it is not clear why Priya yearns to meet Immy after three years. Had it been only because of the signals life is giving her, it would still have been fine. But she is suddenly shown to be madly in love with Immy once again after three years for no apparent reason.
In testing destiny, Priya gives Immy the second chance before she completes the first one, that is, before selling the book with her telephone number, to a book dealer randomly. When, according to her, Immy fails the second test, why does Priya go ahead with the first test by writing her number on the book and giving it away to a books dealer? After all, she has no faith in destiny following her break-up with Immy, so why on earth is she testing something she doesn’t believe in?
Although Shiraz Ahmed has kept two hooks – the Rs. 50 currency note and the book on numerology – for the lovers to meet, it becomes abundantly clear that just one hook would suffice to unite the lovers, making the other hook redundant in that sense.
As the aforementioned points would indicate, the defects in the screenplay are too many to be overlooked. Besides, in today’s age and time, it seems rather unbelievable that two young people can’t track one another down. In their search, it also emerges that Priya is unaware of Immy’s real name (Amit) although she had proposed marriage to him! Even if for one moment, one were to accept that she only knew his nickname, did she never bother to know the real names of Immy’s college friends who accompanied him to Bangkok, where the two of them met and fell in love? If she had, she’d have at least found out their whereabouts from Immy’s college.
It is because of the above weaknesses in the script that the audience does not experience the high it should, in the climax.
Of course, notwithstanding the drawbacks, there are some exhilarating moments in the script. For instance, the second test of destiny – when Priya and Immy enter two separate elevators in the hotel to see if they both press the button of the same floor, and they do exactly that, implying thereby that they are destined to be together – is excellent. Similarly, the track of the secondhand books dealer, Ijazbhai (Satish Kaushik), and the brief track of the lady (Tanaaz Currim) who gives Immy the credit card details of Priya by breaking the rules of the bank are very heartwarming points in the drama. However, they are few and far between.
Emotions fail to touch the heart. For instance, Priya crying at the Mirchi Radio station doesn’t have the desired impact.
Overall, despite some genuinely good moments in the film, the screenplay looks like a job hurriedly done, often without proper application of mind. Dialogues should’ve been more weighty. The film has taken over five years after completion, to be released, and the staleness shows, especially because Shahid Kapoor’s looks have changed over these years and so have fashions.
Shahid Kapoor does a sincere job and is quite endearing. Kareena Kapoor is very good and does full justice to her character. Aarti Chhabria is good in a brief role. Panini Raaj Kumar fails to impress in his debut performance. Delnaaz Paul gets limited scope and is natural. Sarfaraz Khan does an average job. Satish Shah is okay in an inconsequential role. Kiron Kher lends the desired support. Satish Kaushik is very nice and his interaction with Aarti Chhabria evokes laughter and offers the much-needed relief. Tanaaz Currim, Himani Shivpuri, Hemant Pandey and the others provide fair support.
Satish Kaushik’s direction is alright but it is not what the youth today wants (fast cuts, racy pace, brief dialogues etc.). Himesh Reshammiya’s music is a mixed bag. The title song, ‘Rabba’ and ‘Kuchh toh baaki hai’ songs are appealing. The engagement song and the romantic number are not upto the mark. The absence of a super-hit number in the youthful romantic story is sorely felt. Song picturisations (Ahmed Khan) lack freshness obviously! Sanjoy Chowdhary’s background music is good in parts only. Cinematography (S. Sriram) is quite eye-filling.
On the whole, Milenge Milenge is not just stale but also a script of convenience. At the box-office, it will record dull collections. However, it must be said that because of its limited cost (since it was made years back when star prices and other costs were far lower) on the one hand and its handsome recovery from sale of satellite rights, it will not entail losses to its producer who is also the distributor.
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