Some films create expectations; some conform to them. With a title like Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, director Abhishek Kapoor expects you to enter the theatre with a list of checkboxes, and he ticks them one by one. Chandigarh, in popular imagination, means a few things: dudebros – low on brain, high on brawn – fixated on masculinity. You get all of that in the movie’s hero: Manu (Ayushmann Khurrana), a gym instructor, training for the ‘Gabru of All Time (GOAT)’ competition. His two sisters, in a very aunt-like fashion, pester him for marriage. Drinking protein shake, he shuts them out of the room. Manu, as expected, is unrefined: He calls Zumba “Joomba”. He’s also a loser: His only girlfriend left him for a man settled in “Kanneda [Canada]”.
Now since this is a romantic comedy (of sorts), the film has a heroine. And what are romances if not the attraction of the opposites? So, there you have it. Meet Maanvi (Vaani Kapoor), who is everything Manu is not: attractive, suave, restrained. She finds a job as a Zumba instructor in his gym (“Jatts Flex IT”). He’s attracted to her like a true Bollywood hero: He gets awkward in her presence, eyes her from a distance, and plans to ask her out. These are not people as much as (screenwriting) conceptions. Drawn from broad stereotypes, they ride on our expectations. Which is tied to the film’s humour: characters straining to be funny, hoping to elicit laughs by hitting the most familiar – the most tired – beats.
Also read: ‘Bob Biswas’ Doesn’t Know What Kind of Film it Wants to Be
Manu and Maanvi’s relationship, too, lacks the requisite spark. He asks her out; she hesitates, then agrees. They meet at a local restaurant (Back to Source, in case you’re interested – the film is more invested in plugging brands than creating convincing characters; Nykaa is another example). They amble in the park later, where they talk about their pasts and families. One meeting, that’s it, and the movie expects you to believe they’re a couple. If you’re still not convinced then, well, there’s a Holi song. (It’s a pattern that recurs throughout – any kind of complexity, or hesitation or confusion, is smoothened over by a song.) You know the next drill: they hook up and hook up – and hook up some more – and, you know this as well, they’re in love!
This is where the film takes a turn. Most mediocre Bollywood romances play out like this: Boy meets Girl. Sparks fly. Love story. Parental opposition (or any other flimsy conflict). End. But since Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is a ‘thinking’ Bollywood romance, it takes a detour (not a spoiler, the twist comes much before the interval): Boy meets Girl. Sparks fly. Love story. But the girl wasn’t always a girl (“I’m a trans girl,” Maanvi tells Manu). The rest, going by the first 40-odd minutes, is not tough to guess.
Even with multiple and obvious foreshadowing, this is a good twist, as it attempts to tell a story stifling in the crevices of Indian society. It prompts a question as pertinent as ever: Who is normal – or what is normal? It probes our obsession with masculinity and, in that retrospective light, illuminates stark contrasts by making the hero a bodybuilder in a testosterone-charged town. And it does all of that in a mainstream medium – a ‘normal’ cinematic world filled with laughs, romance, songs. But a film is more than a pamphlet: It can’t survive on ‘message’ alone.
More so for a simplistic film that, before the twist, takes refuge in stock characters and situations. It doesn’t improve, either. You know that the twist will produce a conflict. You know that the first conflict will be resolved to produce a different conflict that will culminate in a rousing climax. (Remember the Chekhovian gun, the GOAT competition?) You know the twist will allow the screenwriters to produce a series of sermonising scenes – it’s all in there, and it’s all been done before. If you’ve seen enough bad Hindi films (like I have), you’ll be able to predict every plot turn (like I did).
Because there’s not much here. The film relies on stale devices to propel the plot. A viral YouTube clip sullies relationships. Characters transform through songs that include flashbacks and dialogues. But since that could be too subtle for many, the lyrics hammer our conscience: ‘Maafi de de, de de mainu maafi! [forgive me, please, forgive me]’. A small ham-handed animated segment functions as a public service announcement. Amid all this, the film keeps trying to make you laugh. (Except for a few post-interval scenes, it continues to fail.)
Also read: Salman Khan’s ‘Antim’ Is Yet Another Outing Where All Problems Are Solved With Bullets
Khurrana is bad; Kapoor is worse. As the film’s thematic pivot, she’s often clueless in pathos-ridden scenes. And Khurrana, who otherwise excels in playing the charming small-town everyman, looks fatigued by the weight of his own formula. For a long time, the actor has plugged significant narrative gulfs in mainstream Bollywood, but in Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui there’s only method, no madness. He plays a programmed character in a programmatic fashion. A comic line here, a romantic overture there, all aimed to reach a crowd-pleasing sanctimony. If this is the beginning of his ‘Madhur Bhandarkar-esque’ turn, then it should worry us all.
And Abhishek, once a promising director (Rock On!! and Kai Po Che), has delivered his third straight dud (after Fitoor and Kedarnath). But what’s unforgivable about his latest is that he’s ruined a great idea – not for himself as much as for other talented makers – doing a great disservice to the ‘cause’ he purports to champion.