Aye Dil Hai Mushkil Movie Review

This film is unadulterated garbage. It is a movie about the ‘true’ nature of romantic love that is conceived, written and executed on a level on empty-headedness that is mind boggling. Even if you floss your teeth after leaving the theatre, you will not find any substance to take home with you.

The USP for this Karan Johar film, set in London and Paris, is there for all to see. Characters are tagged with a profession, but you rarely see anyone doing any work. Everyone is filthy rich and live in swanky apartments. Each one of them is looking to make out with the other’s romantic partner.

Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor) is a would be singer aspiring to be the next Mohammed Rafi. He is dating an airhead called Lisa (Lisa Haydon). One day, he wanders into a bar and is picked up by Alizeh (Anushka Sharma). They try to go to bed, but it doesn’t work out, because each feels committed to the original partner. In Alizeh’s case, this is a handsome DJ called Ali (Fawad Khan), a man who has a phobia about getting tied to a permanent relationship, until he finally seals the match on home soil in Lucknow. Meanwhile, Ayan, after mourning the loss of Alizeh’s love/friendship for just a nanosecond, meets ravishing Saba Taliyar Khan (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) at an airport. Before the blink of an eye, you see them tucked cosily in bed, living the good life at her lavishly furnished flat.

In other words, characters in this movie flit from flower to flower like beautiful, multicolored butterflies that have to mate quickly before they die. That life is all too short is one of the more obvious themes of this movie, the other being an ornate and overwrought discussion on the difference between a friendship and a sexual relationship. The entirety of Aye Dil Hai Mushkil revolves around these endless conversations; and this would be fine, even absorbing, had it been written interestingly. Unfortunately, the writer, Karan Johar, can’t write to save his life, let alone those of his characters.

The result is a movie that meanders aimlessly for three whole hours, and the awful thing is that you can predict the pointlessness of it all in the first half hour. You then know you are trapped and can do nothing about it. If ever this director had to actually prove his nationalist fervour and/or patriotic valour, all he would need to do is to screen Aye Dil Hai Mushkil to the infiltrators across the border, with a stern message that there would be a repeat screening should they dare cross the line of control.

About The Author

Ajit Duara