Case Closed - Evidence on page 2 !!

A still from the film.

Leaving the cinema at the end of Befikre, having spent two hours and ten minutes in the company of its shallow protagonists, I felt exhausted. Just flat out drained watching how much of an effort the film makes to appear effortless. How hard it tries to give the impression that it's not trying at all.

Bollywood doesn't do romantic comedies very well. What starts out light and frothy inevitably ends up in mawkish melodrama. Mercifully, writer-director Aditya Chopra avoids these traps, keeping the film's tone consistently breezy and seldom seguing into rona dhona. Delhi boy Dharam (Ranveer Singh) and Paris-born Shyra (Vaani Kapoor) haven't even known each a few hours before they're swapping saliva and slipping between the sheets. But not for one moment does their shared chemistry burn up the screen. For all the kiss-kiss-wham-bam, the sparks are missing.

It's been 12 years since the iconic sitcom Friends winded up, and god knows many of us are addicted to its reruns. But Chopra appears to suffer from an unhealthy obsession with the show, lifting scenarios and modeling his leads after those characters. In his very opening scene, he borrows from that famous break up between Ross and Rachel where he demands his shirt back from her.

But Dharam's standup comic character is actually inspired by Joey from the sitcom - the stag who hits on every woman, and doesn't believe in commitment. On the surface, tour guide Shyra seems tailor-made for him - she isn't looking for a relationship, is always up for a dare, and the two decide early on that they'll never say "I love you" to each other.

The pair lives it up in Paris, singing, dancing, wolfing down waffles and beer until they do fall in love. The problem is that the script doesn't quite know what to do with them. They flit from one scenario to the next - French kissing endlessly, going through a breakup, becoming friends a year after the split, going on double dates, getting engaged to other people in a very Love Aaj Kal kind of way. But none of this ever seems to touch us. Dharam and Shyra just come across as fake.

What's even more tiring is that the two strip down at the drop of a hat - to their underwear, to g-string bikins, to wrapped-up bedsheets, and in Ranveer's case, even going bare bottom in one scene. They also must be the world's most nimble-footed standup comic and tour guide - they hip-hop, tango, salsa and waltz like they're competing in the finals of So You Think You Can Dance.

The typical Yashraj tropes are all here - eye-watering foreign locations, a conversation that links parathas to following your heart, Punjabi parents who watch benevolently, a Bollywood karaoke session, and yes, self-referencing the studio's films endlessly. Just one moment in all this seems clever - when Shyra turns the palat scene from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge on its head.

The rest of Befikre is sheer silliness, especially an Anees Bazmee-style climax scramble in a church. Vishal-Shekhar's infectious tunes and the glossy cinematography are easy on the ear and the eye, but the film ultimately wears you out.

Ranveer Singh does everything he can to elevate the material with his unputdownable energy, at times running the risk of overdoing it. Vaani Kapoor (who might want to have a word with the cameraman for shooting her most unflatteringly) goes for spunky but it's hit and miss.

What the film lacks is genuine feeling. Yes, even the frothiest of rom-coms need something real to keep you invested in its characters. I'm going with one-and-a-half out of five for Befikre. Aditya Chopra may have made one of Hindi cinema's most enduring love stories, but this is a souffl that sinks like a stone.

Befikre is a colossally stupid film, says Raja Sen.

I wonder what films Aditya Chopra watches.

I wonder who the reclusive filmmaker meets and speaks to in real life, and what on earth he imagines lovers and romantics to be doing.

Perhaps he, who obviously watches his own iconic success Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge a million times over, believes (and hopes) they do the same.

Yet if he intends to connect with his audience and make films speaking the 'with-it' language of the youth today, perhaps it is finally time he put an end to his Willy Wonka lifestyle, strolled out of his production house and took a look at the world.

This is because his Befikre is a colossally stupid film, a bad comedy with some skin and spit-swapping thrown onto it in a desperate attempt to attract attention.

Despite the montage where lovers -- old, blond, bewigged -- smooch over the opening credits, what follows is not a youthful or fresh or interesting film.

Like a big budget wolf dressed like a particularly skimpy sheep, this film recycles ideas we've seen done to death by Chopra's own production house: The underdressed carefree tourism of Neal And Nikki melts into the inevitability of Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai, itself built upon the second half of Chopra's DDLJ, with the Dance Of Envy from Dil Toh Pagal Hai thrown in for good measure.

Befikre goes through all these hackneyed bits while trying, in foolhardy fashion, to make a combination of the over-imitated talkie Before Sunrise and the wildly sexy Love Me If You Dare.

Love Me If You Dare, a twisted French romance about a pair of lovers egging each other on from fun and games to callous and destructive madness, is a film that fetishises recklessness and the idea of committing to something impossible: A dare.

It is a heady film that captures, vividly and sexily, the volatility of a relationship built on wildcards.

Befikre doesn't dare.

A mediocre advertisement for Paris Tourism, the film is an inane mess where characters contradict themselves merely in order to outdo their own stupidity.

Even the stolen idea of daring each other into anything isn't adhered to as we see a couple of fools fall in love -- the only upside to this being that they cancel each other's imbecility by taking themselves off the market.

Ranveer Singh is a Delhi boy who titters at lesbians and uses 'that's so gay' as an insult, while Vaani Kapoor is a French girl of Indian origin who has a prolific sex life, and -- conveniently for the production incentives -- shows tourists around Paris.

There are no emotional or romantic stakes anywhere in sight, and it's hard to give a flying fikar what happens to these idiots.

He falls for her, she falls for him, and then after a year of separation -- though we hardly see them apart -- they decide to be friends.

How very French, says the film, which also believes that a young man being polite to his mother is not French. Ah.

I wonder where Aditya Chopra stands on fries. That said, we do find out where he stands on desi potato eating, this film's big romantic question being a mother asking her daughter if her potential soulmate is aalu paratha enough for her.

Kapoor's character is confident but unbearable in the film, yet at least she occasionally makes sense when talking of life and love and marriage.

Singh, who plays a lame stand-up comic, knows absolutely nothing. There are other people on the scene, lovers for these lovers, and while he scores a pretty French girl who tries on headphones and enjoys stripping, she finds herself a smooth, un-boring banker.

I must here admit that given the romantic cinema we've seen this year, it feels refreshing that this banker is played by some regular guy and is not a cameo by some beautiful Pakistani man.

There is, as the trailer promises, a whole lot of kissing in this film, and if you are in the mood to watch much mushing-together of mouths and to see Singh and Kapoor go at it with far too much aggression -- her pre-kiss look is that of a rugby player readying for a scrimmage -- then this film may, by all means, be your thing.

I must, however, warn you that none of this is remotely sexy.

Despite Kaname Onoyama's cinematography being one of this film's few pluses -- there are some fine tracking shots pulling out from the two of them into the lovely world around them -- it is bewildering how unflatteringly Kapoor has been photographed, and Singh cancels out his own charm by frequently displaying the energy of an electrocuted monkey.

Singh is a fine actor but struggles with the inanity of this material, material that requires him not merely to be always-on, but to be always obnoxious.

The only moment he manages to salvage is one early on where he locks eyes passionately with a statue; it's the actor's way of flexing his leading man muscles and saying he could romance anything.

He manages his character by wearing his cluelessness on his sleeve, and making his Delhi boy loud and vaguely effete, and resultantly renders this weak film nearly watchable.

(As an aside I must hereby request some filmmaker to cast Singh in a completely effeminate and clueless role, even that of a valley girl. The Alicia Silverstone role from Clueless, even. He'd kill.)

At a point when our mainstream cinema is beginning to grow up, Befikre is painfully childish drivel that proves to be a maddening waste of time.

It starts out shrill, turns predictable, and ends up chaotic.

To use the language of the youth Aditya Chopra is attempting to speak, let's call it Befi-cray-cray.

Rediff Rating:

Aditya Chopra's film reminds us that a well-shot Bollywood romantic film can be so entertaining even when it does not offer anything new, says Aseem Chhabra.

Aditya Chopra's fourth feature as a director -- Befikre is a hot and sexy film.

Despite its thin plot (what plot, a journalist friend asked me after the film's premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival), the film holds its attention with the good looking stars, their energy, songs, dances and many lovely day and night scenes in Paris.

Chopra's film reminds us that a well-shot Bollywood romantic film can be so entertaining even when it does not necessarily offer anything new.

Befikre opens with a string of kisses. As the credits appear on the screen, we see several characters on the streets of Paris -- young, old and of different colours, kissing as Labon Ka Karobaar plays in the background.

It is a sweet, romantic and very happy look at Paris.

One loses the count of the kisses, just as it is impossible to say how many times the film's leads -- Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor -- lock lips through the film.

Singh and Kapoor kiss with full abandonment in Befikre, again and again, and it is sexy, fun and absolutely okay.

The film is a signal of how far India, Bollywood and the censor board (despite the strange conservative mood the current board often reflects) have come from the days when Hindi films would show flowers and bees to suggest romance, or physical contact between the male and female leads.

But the sexy tones of the film do not stop there. The first scene has Singh's Dharam breaking up with his live-in girl friend. And as he angrily throws her out of his apartment Dharam struts around only in a short black boxer brief.

Also I do not know how much the censor board has cut from the film (we clearly saw the uncensored version of the film in Dubai), but Singh will go down in history of Indian cinema as the first actor to pose completely naked from the back. It is a very brief shot, but I doubt if Chopra used a body double.

Kapoor's fans should not be disappointed. The actress shows enough skin through the film, often taking her top off and showing her bra. She especially looks positively hot shaking her hips and dancing to the song Nashe Si Chad Gayi.

And she and Singh are equally attractive dancing on the streets of Paris to the song Ude Dil Befikre.

Kapoor and Singh are natural dancers and even in many of the film's choreographed sequences they move their bodies with a lot of ease. And their tango-ish dance scene towards the end of the film simmers with a lot of sexual tension.

With all of this sexually charged energy it hardly matters that Befikre attempts to follow a story line.

Dharam is a young man from Karol Bagh in Delhi and he retains a tad bit of Bittoo Sharma's Janakpuri accent from Band Baaja Baaraat. Dharam arrives in Paris to perform at a stand-up comedy club called Delhi Belly.

Singh is often very funny in the film, and utterly likeable and charming, but he is flat as a stand-up comic. Perhaps Dharam should have been given a different career path in Paris.

In Paris Dharam meets Shrya (played with a lot of confidence by Kapoor) -- an Indian woman, born and raised in France. They dance, drink, sing songs, fall in love, move in together, fall out of love and then much like Band Baaja Baaraat's Bittoo Sharma and Shruti Kakkar decide to become friends.

In fact, Befikre carries quite a bit of BBB hangover, with occasional nod to Chopra's breakthrough film Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge.

But in Befikre Dharam and Shyra take it one level further when in a state of confusion and anger they get engaged and even close to marrying other partners.

Of course, Befikre is a Hindi film and no surprise how it will end.

There are some messy moments in the film, especially the weird unruly slapstick scene towards the end in a church.

And that is when one senses that Chopra is not in full control of the plot. He knows how the film will end, but the path to that seems forced and convoluted.

Still much of Befikre is loaded with a carefree spirit. It is joyful and it will make you smile.

Buffoonery Of Eiffel Towerian Proportions Grade F

What's wrong with Bollywood!!

*** This review may contain spoilers ***