Review: Jab Tak Hai Jaan

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma

Director: Yash Chopra

Indian Express Rating: **1/2

The title of Yash Chopra's swan-song has a retrospective bitter-sweetness to it : the veteran director did not live to see his film in the theatres. 'Jab Tak Hai Jaan' has released, in old YRF tradition, on Deepawali, but what the title manages to say pithily takes the fllm nearly three very long hours, and the pay-off isn't as sweet as it should have been.

The story may be set in today's times, but the theme is vintage Yash Chopra, wherein true love happens only once in a lifetime, and it trumps all else. Samar Anand ( SRK) has two lives, and two ladies. He oscillates between London and Leh, and between the rich miss Meera Thapar ( Kaif) and the spunky go-getter Akira Rai ( Sharma) : the London-Meera axis happens pre-interval, with Samar shuttling between being a busker with a yen for sufi ditties, a waiter and a supermarket assistant, and romancing his pretty lass on the side. In the second half, he plays a dishy stubbled bomb disposal expert in Ladakh and the Kashmir valley, being stalked by gutsy Dilli girl Akira who is dying to be a reporter with the Discovery channel.

Aditya Chopra's story had potential for a solidly detailed telling, and it should have turned into a crackling romance in his father's seasoned hands. But the film bumps along the twists that are telegraphed miles ahead, the plot-holes loom larger and larger as the clunky plot progresses, and it gets stuck in the oldest shtick in the world : a lead character suffers from a bang on the head, twice, and, believe it or faint, memory loss. So you don't quite get a 'main kahaan hoon, main kaun hoon' kind of solemnly-intoned 'retrograde amnesia', but it's close. There are also a few laugh out loud sequences while sundry bombs are being disposed, a few more which involve the Indian army going about its business, and others which escalate in the second half. But I'm not going to spoil them for you : you need to experience the hilarity first hand.

... contd.

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