I Hate Luv Storys

Jay (not Jai) Dhingra (Imran Khan) is your average twenty something dude living in the city of dreams who has time for almost everything in his life but for love. He works as an Assistant Director to Vir Kapoor (Samir Soni) who is the leading director in Bollywood. Vir’s passion is to make sobby, atypical, Bollywood, style love stories which involve scenes where the heroine should have pink bedrooms and precisely 4 drops of water on her face in a rain sequence. Ironically, Jay, as the title suggests, hates love stories.

Jay’s best friend is Nikhil (Aseem Tiwari - the fat guy in the sprite commercials) who spends the better part of his life (wonder where he gets the time) making graphs on various parameters related to love. In their spare time, Jay and X spend hours @ the local joint living their singledom to the fullest through litres of beer. Atypical youth of today I say… sigh…. reminds me of my heydays. Wish I cud go back 

As luck would have it, Jay is sent by Vir to watch the latest love flick in theatres and voila… he bumps into Simran (Sonam A Kapoor) who as luck would have it, is watching the movie alone. Another twist of fate gets them to be seated next to each other. I only wish I was as lucky. Now u know why I don’t mind going to movies along (Roshni Gomes are you listening???)

Jay manages to chew Simran’s brains to the hilt and ruins her movie experience but doesn’t realize that yet another twist of fate is going to land him working for the lass since she is Vir’s new art director.

Jay’s initial attempts to flirt with Simran come to naught since she is already engaged to guess who – Raj (gawd – how much will we stretch this Raj Simran story) Dholakia who is probably the one of 2 things that could be labeled as over the top in the movie. Raj’s is a Gujju boy and Simran’s mum wants her to get married to one and definitely not a Punjabi Munda (a mistake she made some twenty years back).

A very close friend of mine once told me that the best person you could get married to is someone who works with you. You just spend so much of time with each other that the familiarity and more importantly the respect is second to none. Although I don’t believe in the same, this is exactly what happens over the few weeks that Simran and Jay spend time over work. The Bad Boy gets the nice girl to fall for her. What happens next? Watch it to find out.

Other than the colour co-ordinated clothes of Jai & Simran and the over the top acting of Jennifer (Bruna Abdullah), the rest of the movie is good fun and worth a Sunday afternoon watch along with the family

Imran Khan continues the freshness that he got to the table with Jaane tu Ya Jaane Na. I hope he forgets about Kidnap and moves on. Sonam A Kapoor, I have always believed will metamorphise into a good actress. She has improved with each of her performances, albeit marginally. But I am betting on her giving a great performance in Aisha which is up next. The supporting cast is above average and delivers what is expected of them.

Vishal Shekhar’s music takes us back to the Dostana days. Similar genre of music. Easy listening. 2 songs which stand out are Bahara and Bin Tere. Will be the caller tune for quite a few people in the days to come.

Punit Malhotra, the 28 year old debutant director gives us a lot to look forward to in the future. I am quite sure he will come up with a couple of really good ones in the days to come.

I Hate Luv Storys plays the numerology card with the title Luv Storys not Love Stories. Sonam A Kapoor not just Sonam Kapoor also seems to have worked. I think it is so so much better than Sonaam Kapur or some other permutation. Either ways, both of these seem to have worked as the front page of TOI earlier this week proclaimed. I “HIT” LUV STORYS.

Verdict – Worth a watch. 5 on 10…. Lets make that 6 on 10 for good first time direction and my new found love for Sonam A Kapoor and the fact that I am a sucker for happy endings.