Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu India Today Movie Review by Kaveree Bamzai

Rating:  

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu
Director:
Shakun Batra
Starring:Kareena Kapoor, Imran Khan

The film looks like a rom com, smells like a rom com, behaves like a rom com. Fortunately, it’s not. A sweet coming of age film, Ek Main Aur Ekk Turises above its numerologically incorrect spelling. And how. Imran Khan is Rahul Kapoor, a perfectly average young man set to inherit his father’s business. He is working in Las Vegas (yes, that is weird) in an architecture firm, for experience. Kareena Kapoor is Rihanna Braganza, who is a hairstylist, also in Vegas. Naturally, she is free spirited and he is strait jacketed. They bond over beers and vodka shots as is the norm with young people in Bollywood films these days. They marry, as people in Vegas do. But of course when they wake up the next day, they are horrified. And of course because it’s a Bollywood movie, they haven’t had sex.

Same old, same old, you say? Actually not. The movie is about the growing friendship between Rihanna and Rahul. She teaches him to be wild, he teaches her the value of friendship. It could have become Anjaana Anjaani but it doesn’t. There are three categories of children in the world we are told-the smart asses, who are smart enough to lead their own lives while pretending to be obedient children; the rebels, who hate their parents and torture them to death; and the parents’ chamchas, who do as they are told. Our friend Rahul is in a league of his own-he wants to fly but can’t. His parents are also unique. Boman Irani is his ambitious father, who will stop at nothing, not even marrying his son off to a stranger, to ensure his business. His mother, Ratna Pathak Shah, is a glamorous and vapid socialite. They have the most fun in the movie, throwing dinner parties, watching opera in Vegas and carting around Louis Vuitton bags.

There’s a lot of stereotyping of course. Rihanna is more laidback because she is a Christian from what appears to be Bandra. He is a rich Punjabi boy from Peddar Road. But their relationship develops quite sweetly-when he realizes he is in love, he doesn’t sing a song but dances to one, a la Tom Cruise in Risky Business, and when she wants him to cheer up, she takes him to a fun fair. Imran Khan has always been cute, with the most expressive eyebrows in Bollywood. But here he really comes into his own, given a role where he can underplay to the hilt. He’s the boy who was given everything but never given a chance, the boy who wanted to be a photographer (what is it with Bollywood and photography-Wake Up Sid and 3 Idiots, remember?), the boy who is made to chew his food 32 times, and brush his teeth three times a day.

She is his antithesis, doing exactly as she pleases-though she is a defective piece as she says, with two broken teeth and a steel ball in her ankle which shattered her ballet dancer dreams. She is also older, 27 to his 25. But they are both thoughtful young people and it’s lovely to see their friendship growing.

Music by Amit Trivedi and lyrics by the bard of the hour, Amitabh Bhattacharyya, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu is a gentle little film, where even the regulation song with Americans dancing to Bollywood music in the middle of Vegas don’t look so bad. Thank you, Imran, you’re all grown up. And thank you Kareena for playing Rihanna with a lightbulb inside your head. Her skin is fresh, her eyes glow, her hair tumbles, and she is a good shoulder for Imran to cry on.

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