Sanam Teri Kasam Hindi Movie
Take a moment and applaud the two directors who chose a not so conventional looking girl to play the love interest of the overly muscled and tattooed lad who apparently does nothing but 'exercise' and kiss girls in landing spaces of the building.
The kissing session in an open lift arouses the ire of the South Indian Dad (played marvelously by Manish Chaudhari) who complains to the building secretary. His nerdy daughter Saraswati (Pakistani actor Mawra Hocane, deliciously camouflaged as a vibhuti-wearing South Indian girl) works at a library and figures out that the girl kissing the tattooed, muscled boy is none other than Ruby Malhotra the makeover queen.
Now Saraswati needs a makeover because her dad has made it very clear that only when she gets married that the younger sister can marry. The younger sister already has a boyfriend and is impatient with her older sister. The mother is sweet, but ineffective in the face of the stern dad and spends the whole movie in tears.
Saraswati's visit to the muscle boy's apartment ends up in a misunderstanding with the father and that's when we realise that she's just as upright and principled as her dad. She does not apologise to her dad but charmingly uses the muscled lad to find her a home, and help her with a makeover. 'I'll show him that I can get an IIT-IIM-Shastri boy to marry me!' is her goal.
The muscled lad seems to be melting because he seems to do everything for her. But it doesn't show because he attended gym more than the acting classes he signed up for. Saraswati blithely takes to the makeover, and finds herself Abhimanyu Shastri from her office building who is the requisite IIT-IIM chap.
She's ready to get married to Abhimanyu (to show her dad!) and travel to Turkey. Muscled lad in the meanwhile looks sadder and sadder but takes her to makeover guy (Vijay Raaz, fun role for him!) helps her buys her trousseau and takes over the wedding preparations. She still has no clue that the hero is now in love with her. She has 'friend-zoned' him.
This is where the movie begins to avalanche towards the unbelievable and tragic end.
We like tragic ends. We throng to the screening of Love Story (the book shows up in this movie as well), and Mughal-e-Azam, Heer Ranjha, Romeo and Juliet and other doomed loves. But when the dying is prolonged and protracted the audience simply becomes restless and begins asking questions like, 'Who is paying the hospital bills?'
The film is so good in the beginning, you wish they had found some other conclusion to the story than the tragedy it ends up being. The film is shot in rather pleasing colors (the peppy 'Kheench Meri Photo' is shot in a happy, colorful market), but there's nothing in the second half to make us feel better or hopeful about falling in love with 'unsuitable' lads.
But to give them marks, the story is decently fleshed out and all smoking guns covered. The trailer with the songs is very misleading and makes it look like one of those 'also ran' movies. But it isn't like that. It is a decent story that only fails because at 154 minutes, the end is so long drawn.