|
|
Thursday, April 25, 2024
|
|
BOLLYWOOD LOVE EXPRESS
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: **
God and Subhash Ghai know that the film industry needs new talent. It is,
therefore, heartening to see Ghai patronise newcomers. Sadly, Love
Express is an uninspired vehicle to accommodate new talents. Everyone
connected with this rather touchingly disoriented low-budget romantic comedy set
in `speeding` train, is untried and eager to make an impression.
The amateurishness of presentation is in some ways, a sign of burgeoning talent.
The students of Ghai`s acting school seem in search of their bearings. And
that`s what makes them so endearing.
The set representing the chugging train is quickly filled up with a wedding
party, assorted uncles and aunts, nieces, nephews and oddball characters who
burst in pop-bhangra songs as though they are auditioning for India`s Most
Flaunted. The characters revel in their loud quirkiness because that`s the way a
Punjabi wedding entourage is expected to behave.
Subtlety or whatever we may call any attempt to infuse an aesthetic restraint to
a film about wedding revelry, is at a low premium here. The debutant director
has a grip over his characters but not much of an idea as to how to package them
in any way that appears innovative.
The two newcomers playing the reluctant bride and the groom struggle with lines
that try hard to replicate the trendy cynicism of today`s wannabe-cool brigade.
The small-town social climbers with their fake designer bags and borrowed
accents were far more palpably credible in Aanand Kumar`s Tanu Weds
Manu.
Love Express expresses neither a love for the small-town milieu that
it tries to pack into a train of caricatural characters, nor does it display any
fluidity in its narration.
The actors possess no wherewithal to make the loud caricatural characters spoofy
in their flamboyance. At the most, we can smile indulgently at the new talent
that Subhash Ghai`s film school throws forward. Decades ago Ghai acted in a film
Umang about youthful aspirations. Love Express makes you wonder what
these young guns really want.
Mukta Searchlight’s Love Express is a romantic comedy
tracing the journey of two parallel love stories in a train full of Baraatis
from Amritsar to Mumbai. A young couple on the way to their own wedding
wants to break-up, while the other couple wants to make up after a five-year-old
break-up.
The first couple plots to break their wedding because it’s an arranged
marriage – arranged by their parents who have been friends for decades - but
they are definitely not amenable to an arranged marriage and would prefer to
find their own match. So they hatch a plan and are successful but at a heavy
cost to their families. Is it too late for them to make amends? A series
of situations with several twists and turns take place during this fun-filled
and eventful journey on Love Express - a joyride through a Punjabi wedding on
wheels that makes you laugh and touches your heart.
With most of the lead actors and technicians including debutant director Sunny
Bhambhani being alumni of Whistling Woods’ first batch, Love Express is a
Subhash Ghai presentation of a Mukta Searchlight production and is set to
release 13 May 2011
