“SEEN THAT, HEARD THAT” LOVE STORY. Review on Junooniyat

Let’s begin with the title - Junooniyat means obsession, but the only obsession this movie depicts is one which gives all love stories a sad image(I never start anything with negative, but this makes exception).

Director Vivek Agnihotri’s movie is full of scenic beauty of snow-capped mountains of Kashmir and Punjabi-esque colorful streets of Patiala.

Getting to the story, it is the same “seen that, heard that” love story, piling on the pulpy characters and ever-so-not-enough illogical drama(give it a rest ya all).

Here’s the how and why, the sassy Punjabi kudi Suhani Kapoor(Yami Gautam) ditches her Christmas camp in Himalayas and slinks away for a swim in a sulphur pool. Apparently she loses her marbles over the thought of swimming, totally relatable, NOT.

The lake is a restricted area and Jahan Bakshi(Samrat Pulkit) has been enlisted to rescue the violator. Though the so-called damsel in distress is perfectly hale and hearty when he descends from the helicopter in total Tom Cruise style from Mission Impossible and gets carried out of the water like a mermaid. Later, it is known that she is a college student and a swimming champ.

Suhani is detained for trespassing and been questioned by commander until her antecedents are verified. To add further some non-sensical drama, she accuses Jahan of manhandling her and demands an apology. This is the most apt way to bring the main characters so that the love story can be stitched together.

During the Christmas party, Suhani gets forced to drink brandy to which she denies saying that she doesn’t drink. The commander-in-chief persuades her saying that brandy is not alcohol but a lifestyle. So the lass drinks and becomes high and cue a Bollywood song. The next thing she does is dancing with soldiers and particularly with Bakshi. Three days detained in an army camp, some alcohol, dancing they both vow to spend the rest of their lives together.

This was just the beginning, Suhani belongs to a family where three men have lost their lives in the line of duty. So her tractor-selling father tells her that she has no right to make decisions for herself and that is out of the question to her to get married to Jahan. Suhani is left with two choices – either leave her family for her love, whom she adores or persuade Jahan to leave army, which he adores.

As the story write itself or it is just very predictable, the movie got to end in some Punjabi wedding. So it does. A destination wedding in Patiala where Suhani is getting married to a scrubbed NRI bridegroom(Gulshan Devaiah) who walks into a wedding ceremony with assorted family members and unaware that the bride isn’t dying to tie the knot with him. So whom will she end up with – the Canada return NRI or her best friend of three days, Jahan?

This is a very predictable story with many slips in the scripts, one where Mishti(Hrishitaa Bhatt) Suhani’s sis-in-law sees Jahan standing in front of them in latter’s wedding and gives no reaction. That seemed really oblivious. What doesn't make sense is that Jahan waits for four parties and two songs to get on with his sole idea of disrupting the wedding(rolling-my-eyes moment).

Movie has many complications, whole bunch of misunderstanding, with sing-and-dance set pieces and bucket-full of tears, Junooniyat lurches it way to absurd climax.

Talking about the performances, Pulkit and Yami pull off their characters well, but wish their chemistry and talent was used in much lustrous movie. The only thing to take back from this movie is the excellent cinematography of snow-capped peaks, breath-taking, and the rest movie just draws blank.

A cinema, absolutely, has scenes and images. But not all scenes and images can make a cinema. So pretty scenes do not make a film pretty.