Cinemaah

Girl Power


Yashraj Films, looking at a growing youth audience at the multiplex, shrewdly decided to set up a youth film wing, and the first offering is Luv Ka The End.

Totally derivative and extremely silly,  this Bumpy (Bumpy?) film will probably hit its target of teen girls.  The shorts-and-T-shirt clad girls in the film with their giggly high-pitched voices,  can be seen replicated in the ticket queue outside a suburban cinema.

Luv Ka The End (the plot idea and tagline taken from John Tucker must Die) is an urban film, about rich, urban characters, who ostensibly do not have to worry about grades or careers.  The big issue for Rhea (Shraddha Kapoor) on her 18th birthday is taking her relationship with rich dude Luv (Taaha Shah) to the next level.  Then she discovers that he is part of a club of voyeuristic perverts, who award each other points for their conquests, and upload telltale videos on the net. If she had turned down his advances, he already had a “Plan B” lined up, a hotter and richer girl.

Naturally, a guy like this needs to be kicked where it hurts.  Rhea and her two galpals get together to teach Luv a lesson he won’t forget in a hurry. Helping them along is a bespectacled nerd and his even more geeky brother.

From destroying his new Jaguar to putting itching powder in his underwear,  to spiking his drink and getting him into drag, they do everything to humiliate the guy.  Actually, it was rather sporting of newbie Taaha Shah to do the dancing in drag, and gay gags with such lack of inhibition. Full marks to him for courage.

The characters are sketchy and look like they have come out of an American teen flick—at least a of dozen of them are released every summer; but it also cannot be denied that urban teens have a lifestyle that matches that of their US counterparts. For others, it’s a kind of aspirational thing—what clothes, brands (the product placements are not just in your face, they are hit you on the head), lingo is cool and what is ‘behenji’.  Chances are girls between the ages of 12 and 18 will love this superficial kind of girl power. Some more will enjoy the ‘timepass’ idiocy and male-bashing;, and if both kinds are accompanied by their boyfriends, chances are the film will be a hit.