Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar: Ranbir Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor acting like teenagers, in a likeable way

Just the other day we heard Ranbir Kapoor saying he doesn’t want to do rom-coms anymore. No need to be so drastic. There is no harm in doing rom-coms at any point of an actor’s career, as long as he or she behaves his or her age. Jack Nicholson - Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep - Alec Baldwin did rom-coms way past their prime in Somethings’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated, respectively. In Luv Ranjan’s oven-fresh rom-com entitled Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar —yes, that’s finally the title of the film — Ranbir Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor try hard to be that cute bratty teenager couple from Rahul Rawail’s Love Story 40 years ago.

(Actually it wasn’t Rawail’s Love Story: he had not taken credit for direction after a fallout with producer Rajendra Kumar). Kumar Gaurav and Vijeta Pandit were not teenagers either when they did Love Story. But they were close. And their infantile courtship worked. I am not sure Ranbir and Shraddha in Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar look convincing in their kookiness. They try hard. And to their credit, they sort of pull it off. But is this post-30s adolescent behaviour going to be seen all through the film? Or is this mutual teasing just for the teaser? I have always had a soft corner for Luv Ranjan’s films especially Pyaar Ka Punchnaama and its sequel. The love-shove angle in his cinema conveys a comicbook wickedness. One almost expects his characters to turn around at the end to say, “Ha Gotcha!” Ranbir and Shraddha look comfortingly compatible together. That Shraddha is so petite in build helps to give her characters a kind of ageless buoyancy. Ranbir too can pull off the youthful roles as well as his father the great Rishi Kapoor could. Our country needs more sunshine in its cinematic entertainment. In the teaser, Ranbir and Shraddha are like two teenagers sharing an ice cream cone that’s melting fast in the sun. Infantile, but irresistible.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .