In one word, Half Girlfriend is a disappointment
Half Girlfriend Direction: Mohit Suri Actors: Arjun Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor Rating:
Self-pity is a running theme in Mohit Suri’s Half Girlfriend, based on the Chetan Bhagat book of the same name. In this case, self-pity because the people concerned can’t speak English very well — for a better take on this theme, go to Hindi Medium; seriously.
Simrao, a village near Patna, has pinned its hopes on the zamindar’s son, Madhav (Arjun Kapoor).
This is a guy who refers to all parents, very goodly, as ‘MaataPeeta’.
While waiting to be drafted onto the national basketball team, he secures admission to Delhi’s prestigious St Stephen’s College.
There, he meets, charms and falls for a rich but lonely girl named Riya (Shraddha Kapoor). She agrees to become his half girlfriend — ‘friend se thoda zyada, girlfried se kaafi kam’ — a term that is repeated needlessly and endlessly through the film. But this relationship soon turns toxic for our good fella and he begins to struggle to free himself of the friendzone.
The fact that Suri manages to stretch a plot this thin for twoand-a-half hours is an achievement in itself, albeit a dubious one. Even if you ignore Shraddha Kapoor’s clichéd champagne problems, you can’t get past the fact that Arjun Kapoor seems to be sleepwalking through the film. Nor, frankly, can you blame him. Absurdities abound in the screenplay. Characters forget their accents from scene to scene; the plot hops from point to point and goes nowhere.
When Madhav isn’t playing the ideal son or over-ardent lover, he is either being scolded by his hostel mate or delivering lectures on Bihar’s rich past.
I suppose we should be grateful that the incendiary line from the book that went viral for its awfulness: ‘Deti hai toh de, warna kat le’ has been changed to ‘Rehti hai toh reh, warna kat le’.
Half Girlfriend is confused, forced and takes the audience for granted. In a word: disappointing.
EVEN IF YOU IGNORE SHRADDHA KAPOOR’S CLICHÉD CHAMPAGNE PROBLEMS, YOU CAN’T GET PAST THE FACT THAT ARJUN KAPOOR SEEMS TO BE SLEEPWALKING THROUGH THE FILM