Kal, Imtiaz Ali’s films were irritating, Aaj it is insufferable

Kal, a girl in a blue skirt and a boy in khaki pants.

Aaj, a girl in shorts and a boy with questionable hygiene.

Kal, girl asking boy why he’s chasing her.

Aaj, girl asking boy why he didn’t sleep with her.

Kal, boy says, “Okay, I will stop chasing you”.

Aaj, boy says, “You are special”.

Kal, girl responded, “Did I ask you not to chase me?”

Aaj, girl says, “Whateverrrr”.

Kal, boy is Veer (Kartik Aaryan), girl is Leena (Aarushi Sharma) in Udaipur, circa 1990

Aaj, boy is Raghu (Kartik Aaryan), girl is Zoe (Sara Ali Khan) in Delhi 2020

Kal, Leena was a student in a convent school.

Aaj, Zoe has career plans of running an event management company.

Kal, Veer was studying to be a doctor.

Aaj, Raghu is a computer programmer.

Kal, Leena did kathak. Aaj, Zoe does zumba.

Kal, Leena wore salwar-kameez with dupatta.

Aaj, Zoe wears small, trendy clothes and high heels.

Kal, Leena stood in balcony stealing furtive glances.

Aaj, Zoe has tequila shots in a pub.

Kal, Leena had a plait and was very scared of her mother.

Aaj, Zoe’s hair is streaked and she shouts at her mother.

Aaj, a love guru, a philosopher-guide (Randeep Hooda) runs Mazi (past), a coffee shop cum co-working space that has a bar and booze.

He has a kal, and a room upstairs to make out with random girls.

Zoe works out of Mazi, and soon Raghu follows her with his laptop.

Whenever we are in aaj with love guru, we go to his kal for some love lessons.

Kal, Veer loved Leena, she loved him.

Aaj, Raghu loves Zoe, and she loves him.

Kal, Veer and Leena had a thing — whenever they met, she would suddenly, quickly kiss him.

Aaj, Zoe and Raghu make out and then she lies on top of him.

Kal, he had issues, complexes. Aaj, she has issues, complexes.

Kal, Veer hurt Leena, but hurt himself as well.

Aaj, Zoe hurts Raghu, but hurts herself as well.

Kal, parson, tarson, narson, in fact for barson, Imtiaz Ali has been making the same film, over and over — Jab We Met (2007), Love Aaj Kal (2009), Rockstar (2011), Cocktail (2010), Highway (2014), Tamasha (2015), Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017).

Aaj, he has made the same film, again.

Kal, parson, tarson, narson, his heroes and heroines found themselves through love, else they felt lost-lost, sad-sad.

Aaj, his hero and heroine find themselves through love, and without it they feel lost-lost, sad-sad.

Kal, parson, tarson, narson, Imtiaz Ali’s films were about the redemptive power of love.

Aaj, his film is about the redemptive power of love.

Kal, his heroines were childbabes.

Aaj, his heroine is a child-babe, one at least.

Kal, Imtiaz Ali was besotted with boys and girls with tiny IQs.

Aaj, he is still obsessed with a boys and girls with tiny IQs.

Kal, I thought Imtiaz Ali would grow up after having made the same film over and over.

Aaj, it is clear that

Imtiaz Ali doesn’t want to grow up and will keep making the same film over and over, and then again.

Kal, Imtiaz Ali knew how to write and had at least a semblance of a story.

Aaj, he has lost that skill as well, and instead of a story has only expository dialogue.

Love Aaj Kal 2020 has no story whatsoever and so most of the time is spent talking about love, how love feels, what love does, instead of showing it to us.

Imagine a road trip movie where instead of an actual road trip, the lead pair take turns to sit with an uncle at a coffee shop while he tells them about a road trip he once went on. But, rather than talk about interesting, fun stuff, the story he narrates goes like this: “I checked out a car, then I took it for a spin. It got a flat, I changed tyre. Again there was a puncture. Mileage wasn’t good. The gear stick was wobbly, the wipers were not moving smoothly. When I put the window down, the breeze was nice, but her hair got tangled. She was not happy.”

Now imagine that the girl who comes to listen to cafe-wale uncle, walks in and out hyperventilating, like, all of the time.

Leena of kal barely talks. But Zoe of 2020 more than makes up for that Leena, and all the Leenas born and brought up in the three decades between them.

Zoe’s character is created out of Imtiaz Ali’s issues and complexes about women and love. Thus, she has a huffy demeanour, throws tantrums, has only exaggerated, petulant responses and speaks all the time while gesturing frantically. Yet, the instructions to the cameraman were to crouch in front of her and stare up with a grin and a throbbing heart, like a duffer in love.

At one point, after we return from a flashback to aaj, Zoe says to cafe uncle, “Life, haan!”

The banality is just staggering. Zoe’s character is so idiotic that she has a hissy fit before taking all life-altering decisions, all of which are based entirely on what someone else has said or experienced.

Usually, Randeep Hooda is good, but in Love Aaj Kal he is inept and quite unbearable. Sara Ali Khan is not just bad, she is terrible, as if she has regressed as an actor since Kedarnath (2018). After suffering her dizzy gestures and chatter for a while, she actually started grating on my nerves.

Kartik Aaryan and Aarushi Sharma barely have dialogue, in kal and aaj, and yet they try to hold the film with some attempt at acting. But neither love nor their acting can save this meandering, dull banality.

If you were planning a movie for your Valentine’s date, I’d say cleaning public latrines in the service of Swachhchh Bharat would be more fun than watching Love Aaj Kal.

Though I enjoyed Jab We Met, and liked Highway to some extent, I have never been a fan of Imtiaz Ali and his worldview. But now, after Love Aaj Kal, I have developed deep contempt for his baby doll heroines who act out and throw tantrums all the time, and his indulgent, moronic filmmaking.

Somewhere in the middle of Love Aaj Kal sits a stand-up comic routine by one Justice Chaudhary who says that because the male members of cattle at his home are not into monogamy and don’t wear any clothes, he too has decided to discard both, monogamy and clothes.

If you figure what that was about, do drop a line.

Else, please implore the mighty producers of Bollywood who will pour in money for yet another banal bakwas, to sponsor some therapy sessions for Imtiaz Ali and help him grow up a little. And if they feel that ship has sailed, then the therapy could at least help him create female characters that don’t that have the IQ, emotions and mannerisms of eight-year-old girls.

Imtiaz Ali has a very uneasy relationship with grown women and that is visible in the way he has created the character of Zoe’s mother, who has an opinion on like. Played by Simone Singh, this mommy wears her hair and expression like Mrs Addam from Addams Family and may have well arrived to the sets of Love Aaj Kal on a broom with a black conical hat.

Love Aaj Kal isn’t just an annoying, irritating film, it also moves at a glacial pace. At some point after interval, I tried to fixate my eyes on the head of the man sitting in front. Watching his hair grow was less excruciating than watching Imtiaz Ali’s tantrum-throwing child-babe.

If you were planning a movie for your Valentine’s date, I’d say cleaning public latrines in the service of Swachhchh Bharat would be more fun than watching this film.