Director: Dinesh Vijan
Starring: Sushant Singh Rajput, Kriti Sanon, Jim Sarbh
Storyline: A reincarnation tale in which two dudes — Shiv and Zakir — vie for one girl — Saira’s — affection, birth after birth
Raabta has entirely the opposite effect than what its title stands for. It means a deep connection; however the film itself leaves the viewer totally disconnected with what’s happening on-screen.
Not that there’s anything greatly interesting happening out there. Shiv (Sushant Singh Rajput) and Saira (Kriti Sanon) have this instant connect with each other the very first time they meet. He is a happy-go-lucky banker, she makes fancy chocolates during the day and has bad dreams about drowning in the night. At the blink of the eye they jump into bed. While logic would attribute the lusty behaviour to hormones, Saira imagines some larger force at play.
As per any formulaic romcom there are the eminently disposable parents in the background and a close friend who is the butt of all the bad jokes and homophobic drivel.
A convenient week of separation from the hero and you find the heroine getting drawn to a stranger — a liquor baron called Zakir (Jim Sarbh) — who feels like another part of herself. Just when you think a revolutionary new twist will change the history of Indian romcoms forever the familiar good guy-bad boy binary comes to play. The girl gets afflicted with serious guilt and we are taken back in time to another tribal version of the same love triangle.
Tacky SFX, flying chops in the name of stunts, Rajkummar Rao in prosthetics for the role of a 300-odd-year-old who could have been played by anyone given the heavy prosthetic make-up — the never ending film tests your patience to the extreme.
The latent sexism can be heard in the throwaway lines — about how a girl doesn’t desire the hero but heera (diamond), that she has an eye on the bangla (mansion) than the kangla (poor boy).
Sushant Singh Rajput goes over the top in being charming. Both he and Ranveer Singh need to calm down in their attempts to be the new age SRK-like bundles of energy and magnetism. Kriti Sanon wears a T-shirt with “Quinoa and Kale” emblazoned, and bares an impossibly sleek 18-inch midriff. Jim Sarbh in the name of being wicked behaves like a log of wood. And all of them get a free holiday to the beautiful Budapest in the name of acting.
The song, Raabta in Agent Vinod , with the nifty shootout at the core, is one of the most inventively shot film songs in recent times. Here, it’s made into an unforgiveable, unimaginatively shot, starry, gimmicky remix. The only good thing about watching Raabta then was the cream doughnut and coffee I had at interval.
(The article first appeared in The Hindu CinemaPlus.)