Five reasons first why I didn’t want to watch this movie:
1. I still remember the original version,
2. I was on TB drugs when I watched the movie with my wife,
3. There was a strange fear and connection with the movie,
4. Shailene Woodley shares her birthday with my wife and
5. I still love Sushant Singh Rajput (SSR).
But then suddenly last night a Covid survivor — sorry, a warrior in real terms — asked me why I didn’t write my review yet! It’s for you brother.
Based on the original version The Fault In Our Stars, starring Shailene Woodley and (Piscean) Ansel Elgort, this adaptation will keep your tears on the edge as you watch as I don’t know anyone who ever said s/he didn’t like SSR.
Personally, while I was able to get over with my love and pain related to Jharkhand gradually, as the movie was based in Jamshedpur and watching famous places, like Tata Main Hospital (TMH) to Gamharia junction to mention of Ranchi’s Birsa Munda Airport, pus oozed out of the wound once again. But a strange and constant realization that this smiling youngster SSR was no more, gradually shifted the focus on to him.
Even though this version is not as good as the original one, love for SSR will make you overlook the flaws and additional unnecessary mistakes. Say for example, what’s a mangled heap of a BBD Bag bus doing in Jamshedpur? Let’s not focus on those now, maybe later…
The story: Two cancer patients fall in love and live their life together for a short span.
While introduction of the female lead Kizie Basu (Sanjana Sanghi) as a Bengali girl and her bilingual- parents, Saswata Chatterjee and Swastika Mukherjee, fitted my demands from the portrayal of a Bengali family settling in Tatanagar, somehow I felt guilty thinking and realizing that I had seen a better SSR — in terms of acting to body language to dancing — in many more movies earlier.
If direction by Mukesh Chhabra was okay, if I talk of acting, Swastika as the mother and Saswata as the father of the girl were really superb. You may also like the friend of SSR, JP (Sahil Vaid).
The best and the worst: While I will give five stars to the cinematography by Setu, especially his smooth camera work in the title track of the movie, screenplay gets three; lights, dialogues and editing again three and music a big zero.
Note this, it’s composed by AR Rahman and even after being a big fan, I did dare to rate him poor. First, the movie could have been made without any song at all and secondly, this was perhaps his worst work ever.
Overall, not a bad movie if you haven’t watched the original one but definitely not a one-time watch as you know you still love that smiling dude and would watch it again.
That’s it from the critic Piscean!
P.S: If sympathy plays its role and SSR wins the best actor award for this movie, there was certainly “fault” in this star’s constellation.
