A super lame first half followed up with a rocking second half. One could sum this up in the following ways:
1. There are just certain literature which looks super entertaining while watching but make for very predictable and boring reading.
2. While Indians dish out romantic stories by the dozen the treatment is so shabby that you often wonder how the hell did the chemistry build up. On the other hand, you ask them to show conflicting relative and family issues and they dish out a sucker punch. Here it seemed that the director knew that the first half is just meh and the real strength lies in the second half of the movie. So quick was he to dismiss the chemistry that you could blink and miss it.
3. If there was a direct to movie concept in book writing , Chetan Bhagat should officially consider that instead of going the traditional publisher's way.
And last but not the least!
4. Seldom are movies so mainstream and yet celebrate its side actors and character artists so wonderfully. For every effervescent reaction by Alia, Amrita Singh showed why she is such a treat to watch. Ronit Roy turned up and put on all the right moves in reprising his role as the father fighting with his own demons. Revathy and Shivkumar were brilliant as Ananya's parents representing the other side of the spectrum. The struggles of coping with pushy relatives and their own demons at the altars of their sons and daughters done so tastefully and with such restraint. You could almost root for them and hope that they get more and more screen time and that, folks is a rare sight in mainstream Bollywood!
