Khushi fares better in emotional scenes but her chemistry with Junaid has the passion of a toothpaste campaign, observes Sukanya Verma.
Back in 1995, pop singer Anaida crooned, Love today hain ahi aasan. Nahi usmein pehle si shaan.
Same old Gen X suspicions confound Gen Z lovers three decades later. Or so deduces Loveyapa (love+ siyappa), which opens with the disclaimer: Falling in love can be injurious to health.
It's not because they're exposing themselves to dangers of radiation by being constantly glued to their mobile phones and its zillion apps in anticipation of love, sex and dhokha but for the dark, complex secrets every device holds in this era of easily possible double lives.
What if your favourite person saw this faulty side of you?
Loveyapa's social experiment investigates across a love story that blossoms on social media.
Directed by Advait Chandan (Secret Superstar, Laal Singh Chaddha), the Valentine's month confection is a faithful remake of actor-filmmaker Pradeep Ranganathan's Tamil rom-com, Love Today, replete with zany graphics and witty visuals.
Where Ranganathan's awkward energy and frivolous flirtations infused some rascally charm in Love Today's premise -- even if not enough to look away from its mollycoddling treatment of cybercrimes -- Loveyapa's lacklustre leads leave much to be desired.
Gaurav (Junaid Khan) and Bani (Khushi Kapoor) hook up on Insta.
They're 24 years old and contemplating marriage yet too shy to kiss on the lips.
The coyness would strike as a little less stupid if he wasn't asking her for hot selfies before going to bed. Except in this mishmash of new age romance meets old-fashioned values, nothing is quite as it seems.
Be it Bani aka Bani Boo, Gaurav aka Gucci/Baaboo/Cootchie Coo/Thoo/you get the picture. Or even the city they call home. The AQI setting of the rosy-cheeked Delhi in Loveyapa could put Zurich to shame.
When Bani's dad (Ashutosh Rana playing yet another daddy figure with the mischief of Narada Muni and chaste Hindi obsession of Chupke Chupke's Pyaremohan Ilahabadi) learns about this Boo-Boo couple, he decides to put them through a trust test, which involves them swapping their phones for a few days and only then decide if they still want to be together.
As expected, the switch bares how casually they treat their commitment when Bani's cosy interactions with her exes and Gaurav's sexual perversions comes to light.
Fingers are pointed and characters are assassinated as Loveyapa digs for humour at the heart's expense.
Subplots involving Bani's tech-manipulating, social media posturing colleague and Gaurav's sister's upcoming marriage to a portly fella are thrown in to, simultaneously, address issues of deep fake and body shaming.
Despite its facetious tone and Chandan's genuine desire for sensitivity, Gaurav's transgressions convey more harassment than hormones. Treading on offensive territory, treating it lightly for laughs was rampant in masalas of yore but doesn't bode well for modern love.
A lot of the jokes would still sound funny if the actors had the slightest bit of comic timing. Like the scene where Bani rattles off a list of rules and restrictions in one long breath while also responding to Gaurav's loony interjections in the same vein.
The entire sequence is a droll dialogue bombardment whose punches don’t land in Junaid trying too hard and Khushi simply parroting her lines.
Khushi fares better in emotional scenes but her chemistry with Junaid has the passion of a toothpaste campaign.
Junaid's acting method is akin to someone wringing out water from a towel. His enthusiasm to emote is both curious and fascinating.
There are scenes of him trying to recreate dad Aamir Khan's iconic moments from Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander.
25 years later, they are still making the same mistake as they did with Abhishek Bachchan by trying to force fit him in his father's shoes. Loveyapa may differ generation to generation, Bollyapa goes on and on.
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