Dude.
What. Did. I. Just. Watch?
My brain feels like it's been put in a blender with some cheap whiskey and a playlist of 90s Bollywood sad songs. It's 1:15 AM and I should be asleep but nope, just finished Love Aaj Kal on Netflix and now I'm just... staring at my ceiling. My mom came in with some chai halfway through and I had to pause it. Thank god for that pause, honestly. Gave me a moment to process... whatever that was.
So, Kartik Aaryan. Bhai. What was happening? He was trying so hard, I could feel the strain through my laptop screen. All that yelling and stuttering and running around airports. I get it, you're confused about love and career and whatever, but chill. And Sara Ali Khan... man, her character Zoe was just... a lot. All that 'I don't believe in love, I only believe in my career' talk. And then she's crying five minutes later. Make it make sense. Their whole modern story felt like a really long, really dramatic ad for a dating app that went wrong. That whole breakup scene at the airport? I literally cringed so hard I almost slid off my couch. I had to cover my face with a pillow. It was just... so much. And so loud.
But wait. Was it actually that bad? I'm typing this and I'm like, okay, maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe it's because I watched it alone in my room and not with a bunch of friends where we could all make fun of it together. The whole OTT experience, you know? You're on your comfy couch, you can pause, you can check your phone... it kind of breaks the illusion. In a cinema, maybe I'd have felt the... *intensity*. But here? It just felt like two people having a very loud, very public fight in my living room.
And then there was the other story. The '90s one. With Raghav and young Zoe.
THAT. That was the movie I wanted to watch.
Suddenly the colors got warmer, the music was better, and the characters felt... human. Raghav, played by that other guy (Arushi Sharma as young Zoe was brilliant, btw), he was just so... decent. And confused in a way that felt real, not like a cartoon character. There's this one scene that's just stuck in my head. They're in London, it's raining, of course it's raining, and they're under a neon sign, the light reflecting on the wet pavement. And he's telling her he wants to stay with her in Delhi, and she's talking about her big plans to go to London. The look on his face. It wasn't angry, it was just... lost. Like his whole world map had just been erased and redrawn. It was quiet. It was sad. It was perfect. I literally leaned forward, like, getting closer to the screen, trying to absorb it. That single shot said more about love and compromise than the entire modern storyline did in two hours.
It reminded me of this one time, back in college, I was dating this girl, and we had this whole plan, you know? We were going to move to Mumbai after graduation, 'the city of dreams' and all that. I had the whole thing mapped out in my head. And then one day she tells me she got a scholarship to some university in Canada. Just like that. And I remember standing there in the middle of the campus, under this big old tree, and feeling exactly like that Raghav guy. Like the ground had just disappeared from under my feet. We didn't yell. We didn't have a big airport scene. We just... stopped. Funny how you remember these things so randomly at 1 AM while watching a weird Bollywood movie. Never mind. This is getting too personal.
So the movie keeps jumping between these two stories. And the whole point, I guess, is that 'pyaar' (love) is the same, 'aaj' (today) or 'kal' (yesterday/tomorrow). But... is it? The 90s story felt like a genuine, heartfelt dilemma. The 2020 story felt like a rich people problem. Like, you can't figure out your feelings while living in a super fancy apartment and flying to Paris for a weekend? Boo hoo. I thought I liked the message at first, but now that I'm typing this... was it actually kind of dumb? The connection felt so forced. And that ending? With old Raghav and old Zoe meeting again? Come on, yaar. We all saw that coming from a mile away.
I don't know. I'm so conflicted. I hated half of it and genuinely loved the other half. It's like they took two different movies and just stitched them together with a very, very flimsy thread. The performances were a mixed bag, the music was decent (the 90s soundtrack was obviously better), and the whole thing just left me feeling... tired. But also a little bit warm? Because of Raghav and young Zoe. Ugh.
Whatever. My brain is fried. I need to sleep.
6/10. And that's being generous for the '90s part.
- Ishaan - decent