Writer-producer-director Suneel Darshan’s Andaaz 2 is in no way related to his Andaaz in 2003. But don’t go away: there is a Priyanka in the film. A hotheaded, lustful music entrepreneur, Priyanka, played by Natasha Fernandez, is, what you may call, a go-getter. From Mala Sinha in Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi to Amrita Singh in Aaina, the kind of women in our cinema who never come to a happy ending.
After her first meeting with the film’s virginal hero Aarav (Ayush Kumar, has potential) Priyanka is in the shower imagining him soaping her in places where angels fear to tread.
A little later, Priyanka plants a liplock on Aarav, who seems surprised. “That was fast!”
…Perhaps the only speedened component in a film that otherwise takes its time to tell the story of a musician Aarav and his two friends Tony (Srikant Maski) and Ehsaan (Parmarth Singh) who form a band get insulted by music company heads. Saiyaara redux!
Ehsaan is the token ‘Rahim Chacha’ of the Saiyaara-like musical team of three strugglers. Ehsaan later sells his garage to fund Aarav’s father’s kidney transplant: more proof that Muslims are not all bad. Respect.
Back home, Aarav has a disgruntled father (Sanjay Mehndiratta) who keeps taunting his son about his ‘tuntuna’(guitar) and ‘bekar dost log’, and a mother (Neetu Pandey) who just weeps and wails about their laadla beta.
Of course, all of it comes together at the end. Aarav gets fame, fortune and the girl he loves Alisha (Akaisha). They fight over her elder sister, and makeup: she is in full war paint mood, fighting sleeping, romancing, eating, having sex (yes, this is Suneel Darshan’s post millennial love couple), Alisha is facially submerged in every frame. Is she a good actress? Sorry, can’t tell with all the makeup.
Suneel Darshan gives us a quaint combination of a musical and a family drama. Nadeem (credited as ‘Of Nadeem Sharvan fame’) comes up with some breezy pleasant, though not outstanding, tracks which go a long way in giving the film an oldworld feel.
Raju Khan’s choreography is surprisingly sprightly. The lead pair seem easy on their toes while negotiating the dance steps.
Suneel Darshan is more into hiccups than hiphops. The baap-beta tension over his chosen vocation will remind you of Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar in Suneel Darshan’s Ek Rishta. And that horny neighbour who barges into the young hero’s bedroom when he is just out of the bath almost naked, is a nudge to Raj Kapoor’s Bobby.
Dolly Bindra’s over-zealous Dolly Aunty is a bit much to digest. But Suneel Darshan’s unabashed homage to the cinema of the 1970s is sweet, tender, sometimes overdone but never offensive.
