“Rock On 2” is rugged and engaging, with its dramatic core blending into the fabric of music, masti and ‘magik’ with an elan that suggests the birth of a significant new mainstream Bollywood director.
Everything in “Rock On 2” fits. And fits without a squirm. Even the attempt to yoke a socio-political conscience into the musical format is not strained by over-kill. By situating a major part of the plot in Shillong and Meghalaya, the screenwriter has displayed exemplary dexterity. The narrative conveys a commanding comprehension of inter-personal dynamics.The conversations among the characters seem as lived-in as the music that they sing and share. This is partly because of the actors who, on the whole, are uniformly brilliant, at times more so than one would expect in a film where the music that is played and heard threatens to drown the more significant voices wafting through the windows of the frames.Watch Arjun in the sequence where he talks about his childhood poverty, and when he gets on stage to play the guitar, you will wonder if Imtiaz Ali cast the wrong actor in “Rockstar. Shraddha, who has a vital role, succeeds in keeping her character of a repressed musician on a believable plane. Come to think of it, “Rock On 2” is pretty much the most engaging and authentic sequel I’ve seen coming out of Bollywood in recent times. If as William Shakespeare volunteered, music is actually the food of love, then this film is a feast.