Anupama Chopra reviews Chand Mera Dil, directed by Vivek Soni and starring Ananya Panday and Lakshya, for The Hollywood Reporter India. Anupama opens by invoking a line from Tere Ishk Mein — mera jee oobh gaya iss manhoos pyaar se — to describe how she felt after nearly two and a half hours of watching Aarav and Chandni romance, break up, weep, sacrifice, hurt and hate. She notes this isn’t the fault of Ananya and Lakshya, both of whom shoulder the burden of bringing chemistry and conviction to the longwinded love story, and are consistently good — especially in a key pre-interval sequence where their relationship frays. Anupama praises how Vivek and DoP Debojeet Ray stage the confrontation in close-up with a handheld camera, drawing a parallel to a similar scene in the Gujarati film Laalo, and welcomes the fact that when Aarav crosses a line, his behaviour isn’t condoned or glossed over.
Anupama writes that post-interval, the film — co-written by Vivek with Akshat Ghildial and Tushar Paranjape — derails so swiftly it gives you whiplash, with random characters like a cocky tuition student and Chandni’s back-up plan Kevin (Paresh Pahuja) introduced as plot contrivances. She notes that Vivek, whose earlier films Meenakshi Sundareshwar and Aap Jaisa Koi were more amiable love stories, is going for anguish with a capital A here — possibly in the aftermath of tortured love stories like Saiyaara and Tere Ishk Mein — but the story is too half-baked to earn the angst, and singer Faheem Abdullah and composers Sachin-Jigar can enhance emotions but not camouflage clumsy plotting. With Chandni’s childhood trauma rendered too feebly to register and a baffling family lunch scene that’s never explained, Anupama’s THR Bottomline: Chand Mera Dil starts out with promise but the film nose-dives half way and becomes pure tedium. Chand Mera Dil is playing in theatres.
#ChandMeraDil #ChandMeraDilReview #THRIndia