Suparna Thombare
Mumbai, 12 May 2017 14:39 IST
Director Akshay Roy uses the music very effectively, but the narration drifts and loses steam as it progresses.
Abhimanyu Roy (Ayushmann Khurrana) is a successful Hindi pulp fiction writer based in Mumbai, who develops a writer's block as he sets out to write a love story. When he is forced to visit his parents in Kolkata, Bubla, as he is fondly called by his close ones, is forced to confront the memories of his neighbour, friend and childhood sweetheart Bindu. He is still hung up on her and as he begins to put his feelings down on paper, he begins to experience a catharsis.
He starts writing a novel titled Meri Pyari Bindu, and the story begins to move between the present and flashbacks to his love story with Bindu over the years, from the time they first met as kids in 1983.
Abhimanyu and Bindu's world is sweet and nostalgic, laced with some classic songs and the beautiful music by Sachin-Jigar, interspersed with Chopra's lovely vocals.
If you've grown up in the 1990s and transitioned into the 2000s, the radio, cassettes and mix-tapes, hand-written letters, the lack of cell phones, missed calls on landlines, old Hindi classics, Shah Rukh Khan and his dialogues, are all elements you will connect with. Meri Pyaari Bindu is also a story that is relatable — how we drift apart from our childhood friends or crushes as career takes us to different cities and life comes in between as we grow up.
Khurrana is lovable as Abhimanyu. His character development is subtle and he has right amount of earnestness for you to feel for his character. Since the story is mainly from his point of view, one sees Bindu from a certain perspective and probably not for what she really is.
Chopra brings the right amount of effervescence and emotion to Bindu, who is often flippant and impulsive, haunted by the dysfuntional relationship of her parents (which works as the depiction is understated). Despite being away from the big screen for a long time, Chopra is in good form, but her character is just not interesting enough for us to fall in love with like Abhimanyu has. One also hopes to see Chopra in a different mould soon as this could get repetitive in the near future.
Aparajita Adhya and Rajatava Datta are brilliant as Abhimanyu’s parents. The rest of Abhimanyu's boisterous family is also delightful, adding the right support to his story.
What mars the film is that despite all the sweet charm, the film seems to just drift, which is not necessarily a bad thing if done well, but here you start losing interest in how the story is unfolding or how the lovers are going to end up. The ending though is apt and more realistic than many of Yash Raj Films' romcoms.
It is interesting how Abhimanyu and Bindu's life ends up getting reversed — while Abhimanyu, who dreams of a simple life with two kids ends up becoming a successful writer, Bindu, who dreamed of being a famous singer, ends up in a completely opposite space.
At the end of the film, Bindu says that if she had written the story of Abhimanyu's novel, Meri Pyaari Bindu, it would have been very different, but she likes his version more. That's what you feel when you leave the theatre — director Akshay Roy's story is lovely and his world is beautiful, but we would have loved it if he had told it in a way that we would feel a lot more involved with these lovers and feel for their romance.
Reviewed by Suparna Thombare