Break Ke Baad

When the dullest dude in cinema today is made the hero, and bad TV is transferred to the big screen, this is what you get.

When the dullest dude in cinema today is made the hero, and bad TV is transferred to the big screen, this is what you get.

You have to hand it to the makers of Break Ke Baad. At least they got the title right. The film is bad television transferred to cinema. It’s a story about a girl called Aaliya and her reluctance to commit, in perpetuity, to the boy she has grown up with. She has second thoughts. She stops short. She needs breathing space.

So do we all, but the movie offers us none because there is no other sub-plot. So the experience of watching it is like being trapped by a boring couple and forced to go through interminable photo albums of their on/off thing in Australia. You look for the exit and wish them well in ‘splitsville’.

Abhay Gulati (Imran Khan) could win an award for the dullest dude to romance a pretty girl in recent Hindi cinema. Aaliya (Deepika Padukone) has made it clear that she’s had it till here with their childhood stories, their ‘koochie koo’ antics, their nostalgic singing from 90s’ Hindi movies.

But ‘Gelato’, as she calls him, doesn’t get it. He assumes, like her recent cigar smoking posture, that she’s going through a phase. He dotes on her tantrums, and when she ups and leaves for a mass media course in Australia, he actually believes that it is academic aspiration, not the great escape. Only when her cellphone is answered by a man does he finally get it.

The rest of the movie is a patch-up act that doesn’t work for a second. Poor narrative and bad characterisation compound the problems. The leading actors have not a spark of life in them.

In fact, the older generation is infinitely more interesting. Aaliya’s mom (Sharmila Tagore) is a wise prophet, and Gelato’s aunt (Lilette Dubey) is a witty and acerbic lady who is given the best line in Break Ke Baad. She glances at modern fashion and asks, “Is that a blouse or a banyan?”

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Ajit Duara