Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya

Shahid's last big screen outing was "Jersey," which was released in the year 2022, almost two years back. Since then, there has been this painful drought for me as a Shahid fan, who wished dearly to see him grace the theatre screen yet again, and only this weekend handed me the opportunity, and I couldn't help myself but give in.

So was it worth the wait? Did my wishes get fulfilled? Let's find out.

Starting with...

Positives:

Relatively New Concept: While Hollywood, or many other foreign industries for that matter, had already ventured and reached certain heights in this "artificial intelligence" space, the Indian film industry, let alone Bollywood, maintained its distance from the subject due to a lack of funding and a lack of vision, among a dozen other reasons. Thus, I am delighted to see them finally taking that leap of faith and divulging into a territory unexplored and comparatively unfamiliar to the Indian audience. A love story between a human and an AI-driven robot is definitely a promising starting point.

Fresh Pairing: Bollywood has had this tendency of repeating the lead hero-heroine pair for ages; it's something of a tradition here, so it's nice to see a fresh pairing for a change. Shahid and Kriti look fantastic together, and their organic chemistry is what propelled the otherwise bland script (more on this later) forward.

Kriti Sanon: A special mention must go to Kriti, for she has done an impressive job on her part. Playing a humanoid robot, who shares traits of humans in flesh and blood, is easier said than done. I was impressed by her dialogue throwing, their 'timing' to be exact, especially towards the end, where she had given her best.

Now with the...

Negatives:

Lack of Emotions: Two crucial elements of an "ideal" love story are a natural chemistry between the actors and proper depth in their characters. While the first requirement is pretty much taken care of, all thanks to Shahid and Kriti's palpable chemistry, the latter aspect suffers quite drastically, mainly due to a rather lazy write-up that prioritised only the portions of comedy but not the emotional titbits.

Half-Baked Family Dynamics: When you are giving so much time and screen space to the family members of our protagonist, why on earth would you not provide the characters the required depth? I'm infuriated because there were a lot of opportunities the story could have easily grabbed and further solidified its foundation, but it didn't, or, should I say, it couldn't!

Now, ending with...

Mixed:

Middling Humour: There were three or four instances in total where I genuinely laughed, but the rest of the jokes failed to land. For a film that promises to be a laughter-filled, fun ride through and through, it sure is disappointing. Suffice it to say, I expected more. Much, much more.

Irrelevant Music Numbers: Now, do not get me wrong, I have been grooving to the tracks since they got released, especially "Akhiyaan Gulaab" by MItraz, but they do not aid the script in any way. They are merely used as commercial cinema tools, show-pieces that serve no greater purpose.

So to summarise my overall thoughts, it's a decent attempt, keeping in mind the freshness of the concept, but everything felt so half-hearted, almost like they put a leash on their creative thinking, deliberately restricting themselves from exploring deeper depths.