To make a modern rom-com remains the bane of Bollywood: Loveyapa proves all over again just how difficult it is to create a cracking love story which truly captures the essence of today’s swipe-right-and-left generation. The real film kicks in well into the second half, much after the listless toing-and-froing of the pre-interval portion between the two leads who cutely call each other Baani Boo, and Baboo. Ooo.
You think you love each other? Ok, exchange your phones for a day, and see where you go with it, declares Baani’s stern shuddh-Hindi spouting daddyji (Ashustosh Rana). Consternation on faces, and dread in hearts, Baani Sharma and Gaurav ‘Gucci’ Sachdeva hand over their phones to each other, and thus begins Loveyapa, Love Plus ‘Siyapa’, that untranslatable Punjabi word whose closest meaning is trouble.
It’s not just Gen Z which is surgically attached to their handheld devices. We all know boomer uncles with admirable collections of porn clips which they share gleefully amongst their school WhatsApp groups, but the way cell phones can make or break relationships is very here and now, forming the crux of the 2022 Tamil original ‘Love Today’, on which ‘Loveyapa’ is based.
Watch Junaid and Khushi’s SCREEN Live conversation here:
Director Advait Chandan shows courage in showing that both the ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ have secrets buried in their phones: she has exes, and is a convincing liar; he has ex-exes. She has midnight chats strung with emojis, and he, well, has a separate steamy chat history whose surfacing causes the chief chaos in the film, which finally dives into the area of body-shaming, deepfakes and toxic masculinity. But what was the need to wrap up this important stuff in oodles of banality?
Both leads are coming off debuts (Maharaj, The Archies) that didn’t exactly fly. Here they fare better, but only just. It doesn’t help that Junaid Khan, while being perfectly pleasant, doesn’t possess much of an edge: maybe that kind of personable-but-unremarkable fellow is just what this movie needed, but there really isn’t much sizzle he creates with Khushi Kapoor, who’s got a little more going on in the personality department.
It’s the sidebar — played out between Gucci’s sister (Tanvika Parlikar) and her fiance (Kiku Sharda), the latter guarding his cellphone with his life — which delves into the problems of plus-size people, and how that leads to low self-esteem issues, that is more interesting. And however au courant you want to make your film, can you ever get rid of heavy, on-the-nose dialoguing? Grusha Kapoor, playing Gucci’s mum, is given this, which could well be the film’s tagline: ‘beta cell phone har do saal mein badle jaate hain, rishte nahin’. The appropriate Gen Z response would be: yeah, mummyji, whatever.
Loveyapa movie cast: Junaid Khan, Chushi The Capoor, Ashutosh Rana, Kuku Sharsda, Tanvika Parlikar.
Loveyapa movie director: Advait chandan
Loveyapa movie rating: 2 stars
