When director Imtiaz Ali began his feature-length filmmaking career with the genre-redefining Socha Na Tha (Eng.: Little Did I Know), little did people know then what an absolute sensation he’d be today.
Let’s be very clear though—even within the respective spectrums of his more mainstream romantic comedies, he’s always held his own. A film like Love Aaj Kal (Eng.: Love These Days)—flaws and all—was a fascinating take on the dangerous malleability of millennial relationships.
Since then, Ali has given his viewers nothing but the best. From the scathing yet heartbreaking Rockstar to the dangerously personal Tamasha (Eng.: Drama), his filmmaking has seen nothing but the most boundary-pushing narratives in Hindi romance.
Therefore, at the outset Jab Harry Met Sejal (Eng.: When Harry Met Sejal) feels like a shocking backpedal, if anything. In fact, one can quite easily conclude it’s his weakest film so far. Its wafer-thin narrative and strict adherence to the general graph of any film within the genre will be severely heartbreaking to the many people who are expecting differently of him—considering, of course, his masterful eye on the existential crises that are embedded deep within ourselves.
It is fatally flawed but not frustrating, for even within the crevices of the tried-and-tested, there are starkly surprising moments of self-awareness. It’s almost hilariously self-referential but doesn’t make its many Easter eggs painfully obvious. Within the many ups and downs of this journey, there are nods to Khan’s Josh (Eng.: Zeal) and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge (Eng.: The Large-Hearted Will Get the Bride), among others.
The devil is, unsurprisingly, in the details. Anushka Sharma (NH10) is mostly fantastic as Sejal, a Gujarati from Mumbai who is wound up in her own internalized oppressive image-system. Her character arc has two layers—one on the surface, to fool viewers into thinking she’s what a blogger would once move forward to inappropriately coin the “manic pixie dream girl.” Peel off the layers, however, and you find a mostly confident woman who is more comfortable with wearing her heart on her sleeve but is always torn between resolve (interestingly germinating from a rather patriarchal upbringing) and vulnerability.
It’s quite a shame that despite an incredible performance, her accent dwindles between subtle, stereotypical, and downright offensive. Moreover, considering how fascinating her arc of her discovering her agency on things, this just comes out like a sore thumb. Her background is more of a gimmick than anything else, and had she been crisp with her language in spite of her roots, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
Shah Rukh Khan (Dear Zindagi; Eng.: Dear Life) has a character whose motives are mostly unclear and rely heavily on interpretation. While that doesn’t always work wonders in the graph of the film, his performance more than makes up for it. His strength here is restraint—one that was last seen in the incredible Swades (Eng.: Homeland—it’s just a translation, ain’t no Claire Danes involved). He is a problematic character, one that is knee-deep in the murky waters of toxic masculinity and male entitlement. If we were to superficially compare this to a whole set of Bollywood-loverboy roles he’s donned in the past, we’d mostly find nothing different.
Except for this one tiny thing—self-awareness. Harry knows he’s terrible.
There’s a hint of motive justification through abandonment issues, and the trauma of losing a loved one is something that viewers would have liked to explore more, but—and this is his character arc’s biggest flaw—there’s nothing there. The setup doesn’t feel bright enough for the eventual payoff to matter to the viewer emotionally.
Moreover, while the latter half of the film is brazenly bizarre, it milks the dramatic element to the point that it will frustrate viewers. This is sad, considering that Ali is usually quite confident even within the sphere of popular filmmaking.
Despite its disappointing pitfalls, it’s breezy enough to warrant a watch. Supported by K.U. Mohanan’s (Farhan Akhtar’s Don) gorgeous cinematography and Pritam Chakraborty’s (Jagga Jasoos; Eng.: Jagga the Detective) diverse soundtrack, the film has enough moments to give your inner schmaltz its much-needed glee.
Jab Harry Met Sejal is the kind of romantic guilty pleasure that veers, now and then, into guilt-free territory. While you’d want Imtiaz Ali to have stuck to the uncanny, his canny ain’t so bad, either. It falls way behind on his list of films, but if you know what you’re going for, you’ll be just fine.
Because it does exactly what it says on the box.
