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Movie Reviews

The official remake of Mani Ratnam's Ok Kanmani tries for everything that a winsome romance should have: good-looking young couple, perky dialogues, song-and-dance, picturesque locations.

Ratnam's pass at young love in Chennai was a hit, but wasn't a great film, even though Dulquer Salman and Nithya Menen played really well together. Shaad Ali's copy Ok Jaanu, with a screenplay by Ratnam, is faithful but pale and predictable.

Chennai gives way to Mumbai, but everything else plays out the same way. Adi (Aditya Roy Kapoor) and Tara (Shraddha Kapoor) do the obligatory meet cute, and follow that up with a too-stretched prelude which sees them cosily shacked up in a leafy bungalow under the protective eye of an elderly couple.

In Ok Jaanu, we can see Shraddha has progressed on the acting scale, and looks pretty and fresh. Aditya Roy Kapoor has some nice bits too, but the whole enterprise is beset by a drabness, which is surprising because you can accuse Ratnam of anything but being drab.

And given that Shaad Ali did such a good job of the previous time he remade a Mani Ratnam film, it is even more surprising. I can see Saathiya and listen to its lilting songs any number of times (its Tamil original Alaipayuthey is mandatory viewing for anyone interested in mainstream romance).

The older couple, played by Prakash Raj and Leela Samson in Ok Kanmani, was the pivot around which the youngsters revolved, and learnt life lessons. The question that the immortal song asks " will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm 64 " is answered. Of course it is. And Adi and Tara complete the arc we knew they were set for from frame one, in two long hours and some. Of course they do.

Leela Samson, who plays a character afflicted with a degenerative illness, reprises her part: she remains as gorgeous but less effective in Hindi. Naseerudin Shah aces it, though: he underplays beautifully, and speaks his lines as they ought to be spoken, with an ache in the voice.

I was left wanting more of Naseer. And wishing that Bollywood would get more adept at the young love thing: why is it that our modern-day lovers, so much quicker off the mark when it comes to locking lips and rolling in the hay, sound so juvenile? In the still-conservative Chennai you could see how living-in' could become a block but should it be such a big deal in Mumbai in this day and age? And why do the big confessional moments feel more cutesy and constructed rather than real? Love is incomplete without the fuss and the mess: the insistence on prettiness leaches it of interest and passion.

Why don't filmmakers trust their audiences more? And yes, here's a tip: you cannot plonk brands in the middle of the frame and stay classy.

Ok Jaanu movie rating: 1.5 stars

"Tumhare liye zyaada aham kya hai? Tumhara career ya Adi?" (What is more important for you? Your career or Adi?)

Replace Adi with Aidan, Aman, Anthony, Ahmad, Rustom, Gurvinder, Armaan or any of lakhs of available male names, and what you have is a question women have been asked for decades.

What do you want more? Love or career? Marriage and children or that job? Because it has been decreed by those who know what is best for us better than we do, that wombs are incapacitated by ambition, and maternal instincts - a.k.a. every female human's bounden duty - drown in professional success. As is often the case in life, so too in Ok Jaanu, the question is asked by a well-meaning person.

Director Shaad Ali's Ok Jaanu is an official Hindi remake of Ali's mentor Mani Ratnam's 2015 Tamil film O Kadhal Kanmani (Oh My Love, The Apple of My Eye), otherwise known as OK Kanmani, starring Dulquer Salmaan and Nithya Menen. Ratnam has produced the Bollywood version in partnership with Karan Johar, and is credited with the story and screenplay here too.

Ali has had experience adapting Ratnam's work for a north Indian setting and audience. He made his directorial debut in 2002 with Saathiya starring Rani Mukerji and Vivek Oberoi. That film was a reworking of Ratnam's Tamil Alaipayuthey with Shalini and R. Madhavan. The retelling was lovely though not entirely as magical as its forebear. In Ok Jaanu, there is no reworking, just a scene-for-scene translation. And nothing is lost in the process except for the earlier leading man's electric charisma and the leading lady's zest.

Is that a good or bad thing? The answer depends on whether or not you loved OK Kanmani.

Ok Jaanu stars Shraddha Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur in the roles played in OK Kanmani by by Salmaan and Menen. She is an architect who wants to study in France, he is a video game designer who wishes to work in the US. Tara and Adi meet by chance, are drawn to each other and decide to move in together for the few months they have in Mumbai before they go abroad.

(Spoiler alert)

"Is this love?" she asks him towards the start. She stops him from answering and he does not try further to respond at that point. Early on, they agree that marriage and babies are not for them. But as expected, much sex and six months later, they grow on each other and are confused.

The thing with films like OK Kanmani from Kollywood and Befikre from Bollywood is that they tell stories of young, urban, modern, liberal Indians not as they are but as seen through an older person's aspirationally liberal gaze. OK Kanmani was steeped in wannabe coolth of the "please notice that I'm showing a couple having sex and living with each other before marriage" variety. Sadly, despite his relative youth, Ali has done nothing to improve Ratnam's tone.

So yeah, Tara and Adi sleep together, live together and vow not to tie each other down, but when it comes to the crunch, the only difference between this film and almost every other such Hindi film romance featuring a commitment-phobic lead couple is that it acknowledges and underlines the point that a woman need not necessarily choose between career and marital commitment, if marriage is indeed what she wants; that two people can follow their professional dreams and still be together, that following each other to the ends of the earth could be a metaphor rather than a literal geographical journey.

And yeah, that's a big small step, but how do Tara and Adi arrive at that change of mind? What inspires her, a young woman wounded by her parents' divorce and custody battle, to soften up to the idea of marriage? Sure sure, she is in love, but she was in love soon after they met anyway, so what gives her this new confidence? What made Adi see life differently when just minutes earlier he described her as "Tara, my biggest mistake"?

Who knows? All we see are an actor and actress looking pretty, dressing prettily, doing fun stuff while songs play incessantly in the background, and doing the kind of things couples do in self-consciously youth-oriented' romances because they look cute on screen but would merit a tight slap in real life (such as your boyfriend landing up inside - yes inside - your office, skulking about in the shadows and whisking you off for a day in the sun).

The director is so busy whipping up artificial energy in Tara and Adi's relationship on screen, that he forgets one thing: conversations and quiet companionship.

When do these people talk seriously? When do they slow down from driving their jeep along a beach or making out on a high-rise parapet or breaking into a restaurant kitchen or taking food off a stranger's table at a restaurant to simply chat?

If it is Ali's contention that they get to know each other in the spaces in their lives that we do not hear or see on screen, then the problem is this: as a viewer I wanted to know them too, but I came away with a superficial understanding of who they really are.

Ok Jaanu is interesting at first, but as it rolls along it reveals its hollowness, a failing that even the lead couple's charms and the attractive production design cannot overcome.

Far more engaging than the lead couple's relationship is the bond between the elderly owners of the house they are living in, the Alzheimer's-ridden former singer and her caring husband played ever so sweetly by Leela Samson (who was also in OK Kanmani) and Naseeruddin Shah.

A.R. Rahman's music for this film is far from being his best. Sunn bhavara is a pleasant melody, but the title track loses some of its appeal in the journey from Kollywood to Bollywood. Even the remix of Humma humma - Rahman's superhit from Ratnam's 1995 Tamil blockbuster Bombay - is too muted in the effort to be different from the robust original.

Samson and Shah are likeable as the older couple. Kapoor and Kapur are not in the league of Salmaan and Menen, but they do share a nice chemistry that could be better exploited by better writing. That said, the snazzy graphics accompanying the credits cannot camouflage the fact that those credits give second billing to Ms Kapoor although she is the bigger star.

Genuine liberalism and attention to detail are clearly not this film's strengths. For one, not a single artist in a small supporting role leaves an impact. And that loud cellphone conversation across a church aisle would have got Tara and Adi thrown out of any real church in India. To know that though, perhaps you need to enter one as part of your research. Just as you need to acquaint yourself better with young people, enter their minds and understand their way of thinking, to portray them on screen with any degree of depth. Ok Jaanu is a surface skimmer.

OK Jaanu - Review

 Let me first start with the pluses of OK Jaanu. Aditya Roy Kapur and Shradhdha Kapoor have delivered another fresh performance on screen ,guess their comfort with each other has grown and probably of all the screen couples of the modern generation this one is as good as the Deepika-Ranvir pair. Nobody else even comes close. So backed by a screenplay, especially in the first 40 minutes this couple wins you over with their charm.

If I may also say that this one is a better and more intelligent Befikre. Yes it focuses on the devil may care attitude of the new generation. Yes it talks about how the new generation is ok with the physical before marriage aspect of new relationships BUT the director does not make a come grab me spectacle here every five minutes like in Befikre. The screenplay of OK Jaanu gives you an idea that the new generation is also focused and ambitious on what it wants but that is kept as part of the screenplay it is not flaunted by the director.

The movie also has a very subtle and sweet love story between the ever dependable Naseeruddin Shah and Leela Samson. In fact Leela Samson shows us that how a good actor never really is off his or her art , it is the director and the industry which forgets them. Leela Samson as the dignified Charu , who deep down knows her mind is failing her and yet carries herself with so much poise and dignity that she almost is the show stopper of the movie - If you have an eye for subtle superior acting that is. What can I say about Naseer that has not already been said. Give him a role and he will make it look like more important than it is in any screenplay and that is why I feel Naseer should be used more by Bollywood.

There is a whole array of sweet lovable characters , like Adi's Brother and Bhabhi. Adi's office friends.

All of the above said , OK Jaanu also leaves you with a sense of disappointment. The moments are there but somehow it does not add to either the thrill or the drama that makes an epic love story. Mani Ratnam is the master of that date , I still recall "mauna raagam" and "roja" purely for the high drama his lover stories have achieved despite having a very real middle class screenplay. Since I have not watched the original tamil superhit on which OK Jaanu is based am yet to deduct if this is Shaad  Ali's failure. OK Jaanu does not have drama. To make it worse it has a very abrupt screenplay. The idea of a new couple developing maturity by the guidance/observation of another old couple looking out for each other is not new, but it remains a potent screen formulae , unfortunately the climax somehow does not bring that convincing a feeling about how relationships are more about looking out for each other.

The biggest disappointment is OK Jaanu's music. Not one song is worth carrying with you outside the theater. Personally how could Mani Ratnam allow the onscreen molestation of the epic Humma Humma. The music lyric and choreography politely put is third class, it was the energy of Aditya Roy Kapur and Shradhdha which saves the total onscreen humiliation of this legendary anthem of pub parties of the 1990s. Imagine even otherwise a movie which comes from the Dharma movies and Mani Ratnam combined stable does not have one , hummable song. The last time Mani Ratnam combined with another heavy duty maker Ram Gopal Verma they gave us the voltage music of Thiruda Thiruda. I must learn to keep expectations in check.

Go ahead and watch OK Jaanu but you will be fine with it if you keep your expectations under a tight leash. I did not , am disappointed.

Two and a half star.

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