Neil and titty

Neil ‘N’ Nikki

Director: Arjun Sablok

Actors: Uday Chopra, Tanisha

By Mayank Shekhar

I think this film crashed right at the stage when the promotional package named Nikki ‘N’ Nikki, on the lines of Hum and Tum, Bunty and Babli was crafted. Even before you watch the opening credits roll, you’ve heard the title track that states Neal, the “rock-star”, “super-cool”, “super-star”… you somehow know that’s not quite a gentleman called Uday Chopra, this contrivance’s contrived leading man.

I don’t intend to be rude. But as you watch an unbelievable bevy of busty blondes instantly part with their phone numbers, take off their shirts, do breast-strokes, struck beyond belief, as they just spot the bachelor in Vancouver, you can tell a most obvious casting error. In most films, that would be a minor hitch. Here, the hitch becomes more than half the film. Which is effectively a set of situations our man encounters, looking to score as many women as he can, before he turns “man and wife” in three weeks.

When a so-called story line actually develops, by when much of the screen-time has already been hogged by humourless hokum, all you get to see is an incessantly extended, sloppily edited mish-mash of:

Well, for one, Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), except it’s in ‘Kaneda’. It’s a man who’s going to “live his life” in quick-time.

Two, Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha (1988) or actually, Lawrence Kasdan’s French Kiss (1995), wherein a pretty dame (Tanisha, cranky, cantankerous) acquires an acquaintance to get her ex-boyfriend jealous. In the process, the two pretending to be in love, actually get interested in each other.

If you’re still interested, this film can only be remembered for perhaps the longest kiss in Hindi cinema (I am afraid, there couldn’t have been a more unconvincing kiss either).

If you’re still interested, you could spend some moments smirking in the final minutes as the film, packed with all the hip, street lingoes, makes a laboured attempt at mush. “Rom-com,” as they say. Rest, especially with the lead man on, seems science fiction to me, dude.