Raabta

Raabta is one movie where you sort of wonder about the character of each character in that film. Coherence and depth has nothing to do here in this love story. From instant love to forever mine kind of love, the plot of this movie touches diametrically opposite variants of love in a very silly way. The first half of the movie is somewhat watchable, but as the film slips in to the second half, things go haywire.

Saira is this girl who is an orphan and she has a chocolate shop in Budapest (just another thing in bollywood). Shiv is this Banker who has this charismatic charm to woo girls. He apparently meets Saira and the crush culminates into a very deep relationship within a matter of a few days. In between a business tycoon named Zakir Merchant comes in to their life and Saira finds him an interesting character with similar wavelength. How his entry changes things and what all things unfold after that is what Raabta all about.

I hope you all know from the trailers of this film that the film has a reincarnation idea involved. Towards the last quarter of the film Saira tells Shiv that they were together 1000 years back in another life. And the kind of “Eh? What?” expression we see on Shiv’s face is the same reaction we would have when we look at the story of Raabta. In the present day story, Shiv sees Saira (who claims to be an introvert) and at the end of that night first kiss happens, the second night they are sleeping together and the third night it is almost on the verge of proposing. I was trying to justify that absurdity by telling my mind that you just wait for the ultra romantic love story that will come in the second half. To my surprise in the past life also the case was the same.

Sushanth Singh Rajput is trying hard to be the Ranbir Kapoor, vintage SRK kind of charmer. But the kind of tips and tricks the writers of Raabta has given him makes Shiv an artificial flirt. Kriti Sanon looks beautiful and has some innocence in her face that justifies the character of Saira. But like I said the writing puts the characters in an awkward space. Poor Jim Sarbh looked effective in the first half and the second half shows Bollywood’s intention to typecast him as the next psycho villain. In case if you guys watch the movie in future, there is a really old man who looks like the grandfather of Deadpool (without mask) in that flash back portion. That is Rajkumar Rao!

Dinesh Vijan who has produced a lot of films under the banner Maddock films, makes his debut as a director in Raabta. He has managed to hire some of the best in the field for various technical aspects and that does make this movie look visually an okay one. But the writing department of the film is a huge let down. The story here moves forward without a strong foundation. As I said in the beginning, if you try to analyze characters for their deeds in the movie, it makes no sense (Love is blind but not weird). Unintentional humor is there at many areas. There is a comet related subplot which makes the whole story cheesier. Cinematography works for the movie only in the eye candy sense. The music is kind of okay and Agent Vinod version of Raabta is still the better one in my opinion.

Too many things have gone wrong for Raabta. From the tough to understand characters to zero depth emotions and over the top situations, Raabta doesn’t have anything that I could point out and appreciate. It is only similar to Magadheera in certain areas. The Rajamouli film had some foundation to its credit which Raabta terribly lacks.

Rating: 1.5/5