Director Shaad Ali is back with OK Jaanu, a remake of Mani Ratnam's Tamil hit OK Kanmani. His last directorial outing, Kill Dil, was an unmitigated debacle. OK Jaanu marks the return of Shraddha Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur as the lead pair after three years ( Aashiqui 2) , and their chemistry is one of the main draws of the film.
OK Jaanu revolves around millennials Adi ( Aditya) and Tara ( Shraddha) who decide to date after a brief near-encounter at a railway station and meeting at a wedding. The catch? Video-game designer Adi has his sights set on the US, and architect Tara has Paris goals. So they want a no-commitment relationship. They enter into a live-in for their numbered days in India. They both want no haq jataaoing and share a mutual aversion to marriage.
Perhaps for its timing, OK Jaanu would have suffered from a serious Befikre hangover, were it not for the presence of the other duo, Naseeruddin Shah and Leela Samson, who play the affectionate older couple letting out their apartment to Adi and Tara. Leela reprises her role of the Alzheimer's-stricken classical singer from the original, and Naseer steps into Prakash Raj's shoes to play her doting husband, to introduce the idea of old-school love as a contrast to Gen Y's carefree love.
OK Jaanu captures the youthfulness of Shraddha and Aditya's relationship perfectly. Shraddha is the playful girlfriend, who gets a kick out of scaring her boyfriend, whether it is a mock-serious conversation about getting engaged or the pregnancy scare that she gives Aditya in jest. Though OK Jaanu sometimes goes overboard in trying to stay youthful - how many twenty-somethings still say Whatevs?
The film also seems to scratch the surface but stays away from really going deep into anything. Take Adi and Tara's live-in relationship; they live in an idyllic world of love and laughter and seldom have arguments. It seems a little out of the blue then, when in the last few days they have before Adi takes off to the US, they agree not to fight or cry but just have a good time. Even Tara's standoff with her estranged mother, a scene that had a high potential to delve deeper into Shraddha's character, evokes no emotion.
It was Dulquer Salmaan and Nithya Menen's breezy chemistry that made the original so popular, and Aditya and Shraddha don't disappoint on that front. Shraddha has come a long way in the acting department from her Luv Ka The End days, and Aditya slips into the role of a man-child figuring out life one day at a time with ease.
But it is the elderly couple who make OK Jaanu worth a watch. Naseeruddin Shah effortlessly conveys the pain of loving someone with a degenerative disease, and his relationship with his wife in the film is endearing.
AR Rahman's songs in the original were all chartbusters, but the title track does not sound half as good in Hindi. Enna Sona is quite likeable, though.
The strength of the film is that it remains faithful to the original, and if you haven't watched that, OK Jaanu makes for a decent watch.
