Friday, 10th July 11:50 AM IST

Pluses:

Alia Bhatt looks pretty and fits the bill, Varun Dhawan carries the film on his own, few dialogues evoke laughter, couple of good songs

Minuses:

lazy writing, amateur direction, no depth in terms of characterization or screenplay, lack of chemistry between lead pair which was shocking

Critic Rating:

2/5

Business Rating:

3/5

Verdict:

Watch it only for Varun Dhawan

Detailed Analysis:

Young lead pair and romantic films always create a kind of anticipation amongIndian audience and that too film claims to be homage to all time cult DDLJ. Dharma Production brings another youthful love story.

Film borrows heavily from DDLJ and that everyone knew in advance. A carefree and useless kind of guy Rakesh Sharma aka 'Humpty' (Varun Dhawan) is on the verge of getting flunked in college where his father runs a stationery shop. He tortures a professor to get passing marks but there he meets Kavya Pratap Singh (Alia Bhatt) who is from Ambala and she is in Delhi to buy her dream designer 'lehnga' as she is about to get married in 3 weeks time. Humpty falls in love for Kavya and helps her to arrange money for 'lehnga' as well as solves problem of her friend Gurpreet who was also about to get married. How Humpty wins her girl from her father (Ashutosh Rana) and her fiance Angad (Siddharth Shukla) forms the rest of the story.

Performance wise Varun Dhawan again proves his tremendous screen presence and energy. He tries his best to make his character believable due to such a lazy writing. Alia Bhatt looks good but at times she looks too young in few emotional scenes. Ashutosh Rana is good and so is Siddharth Shukla. Rest of the supporting cast is strictly fine. Special praise for guy who plays Varun's friend Popli.

Music is big minus strictly average as there are too many songs yet not many register except 'Samjhaavan' and 'Saturday'. Almost 4-5 boring songs leave one exhausted and even poorer background score adds to the misery. Camerawork is amazing and almost every shot looks rich. Art work is decent and so is editing except climax where film ends abruptly. Writing is completely inspired from DDLJ and sorry to say but this is not homage, this is really a bad caricaturist copy of that cult film of our time. There is no visible effort to create some kind of passion in love or depth in script.

But it is debut director Shashank Khaitan who tries his best to borrow from cult classic but fails miserably. Characters look so caricatures and script so boring that no one cares whether they meet or not in the end. Shallow approach and forced formula spoil this tale despite a good lead pair.

Film will release tomorrow and should get decent release across 2200 screens. Film will get some competition from Hollywood's 'Planet Of The Apes' and Ritesh starrer Marathi film 'Laibhaari' but more or less it will have a good two week run before Slaman Khan's biggie arrives. Film should open with good initials due to presence of exciting young lead pair. But still film will find it tough to score in long run considering mediocre content and not so great music.

Go for this one if you are die hard romantic or Varun Dhawan fan!