You think the title Sanam Re has an incomplete
ring to it? Wait until you watch the film.
The befuddling, undercooked storyline is sure to
leave most viewers wondering where it actually
begins and where it ends. Sanam Re is a juvenile
jumble that is undecipherable.
Given the way the film rambles aimlessly and gets
all tangled up by the time it gets to the halfway
mark, it would be pointless seeking pointers from
the scriptwriter( Sanjeev Datta) . He himself
probably has no clue.
In Sanam Re, director Divya Khosla Kumar
redefines the’art’ of going around in circles and
returning to the same point after every 15 minutes
or thereabouts.
Never has a two-hour film felt as long as this story
of a small-town boy Akash( Pulkit Samrat) whose
dreams hinge on getting hitched to a girl who lives
down the lane, 500 steps, to be precise, away from
his home.
He counts those steps a number of times in the
course of the film, as he finds the girl - Shruti
( Yami Gautam) - loses her, regains her and loses
her again, by which point the audience is scarcely
interested in the fate of this dead-end relationship.
But that isn’t the only illogicality that the film
wallows in. The town that Akash and Shruti belong
to is a place where winter never ends and the
bright blue river that flows near it never freezes.
It always snows in Tanakpur, where Akash’s
grandpa( Rishi Kapoor) owns a photo studio called
Johnson & Johnson that he hopes to pass on to
the young man.
But at the first opportunity, Akash leaves his town
and his girlfriend Shruti behind and heads to the
big city for further education and employment.
This champion drifter works in a Mumbai company
and is slave-driven by a cruel boss( Manoj Joshi)
who appears to him variously as the god of death
Lord Yama, Count Dracula and Osama bin Laden.
No prizes for guessing, Akash hates his job. To
give himself a break, he returns to his native
Tanakpur to help his father sell the photo studio
which, as Akash says, has lost its relevance in this
era of mobile phones and selfies.
The grandfather, who doubles up as the town
astrologer, makes a prophecy - Akash’s childhood
love will always be with him but he will never get
her.
The prediction comes true and the hero spends the
rest of his life chasing the elusive girl in places as
far apart as the Canadian province of Alberta, the
city of Mumbai and the remote region of Ladakh.
It makes for a mind-numbingly boring drama that
is aggravated by a brainless detour that takes the
hero to a yoga camp in Alberta.
Love isn’t the only reason why he is there. He is on
a mission to secure a lucrative contract that his
company has lost.
He woos Mrs Pablo( Urvashi Rautela), the woman
who holds the key to the deal. But Akash’s plans,
pretty much like the film itself, goes completely
haywire when Shruti lands in their midst.
As Mrs Pablo writhes in jealousy-induced agony,
Akash and Shruti go on a wild romp that is meant
to be funny. It’s funny all right, but the joke is
always entirely on the film.
The’I-will-do-what-I-like’ approach that the director
adopts only means that she has a carte-blanche
from producer-husband Bhushan Kumar to spend
all the money that she can without having to unduly
worry about recovering it.
The writer of this unmitigated disaster believes that
getting a character to mispronounce the name of
Shakespeare and merrily misquote the Bard is
witty. Pity!
Divya Khosla Kumar’s first film, Yaariyan, was a
campus rumpus that got away with its silliness
because it was targeted at a segment that has a
seen and digested much worse.
But Sanam Re is purported to be a more mature
romance. Nothing that transpires in the film comes
anywhere near living up to that expectation.
As for the acting, Pulkit Samrat is fine as long as
he is required to go shirtless and flaunt his
chiselled body.
With Yami Gautam, it is exactly the opposite - she
is clearly ill at ease with all the skin show forced
upon her by a script that cannot do any better.
The curvaceous Urvashi Rautela, on her part, does
her bit to push up the oomph quotient. But it is all
an utter waste in the end.
Sanam Re is a surefire cure for insomnia. Its air of
somnolence is so pervasive that a yawn a minute
is absolutely guaranteed.
The director gets one star for the nerve that helps
her believe that this flimsy film has the depth to
hold its load of pop philosophy about love and
companionship without coming unstuck.
The additional half a star is for cinematographer
Sameer Arya. The frames that he composes are far
too good for a film as awfully bad as this.