Gehraiyaan

Well everybody acted very good ... Excellent.. director did amazing job with mediocre crime petrol story ....

All these years we as audience wanted Bollywood sud make Hollywood level movies so what our dharma producers thought... In Hollywood married super hit actress does all these adult scenes... Let's do that ... That's Sharma's Bollywood reply to Hollywood ... All acted well but why they needed Deepika for that ... I mean Deepika sud do movies which assures produces a great return ... Like high budget experimental movies with action etc ... Any way we will never make good scale movies not atleast by dharma as they are too mediocre in their talent.

The movie Gehraiyaan has no depth in the writing. Shakun Batra's failed to deliver a compelling movie like Kapoor & Sons (2016), here his direction is just mediocre. The first half is a half-baked romantic drama and when in the second half the film takes a different turn, it falls flat. Deepika Padukone delivers a good performance and Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday & Dhairya Karwa were average in their roles.

Direction 2/5 Acting 2.5/5 Dialogues 2/5 Story 2/5 Screenplay 1.5/5.

The weakest part of Gehraiyaan, I thought, was its abrupt transition into a crime thriller. This was always destined to be an emotional drama, and the unexpected jump in pace startled me, and not in a very reassuring way. That aside, the drama bits are fantastically done. The contemporary struggles and feelings of two lived-in couples are splendidly captured. The leads, to my surprise, have incredible chemistry. What also helps is the character texturing. It's a family affair (pun intended!) alright, and leaving some dots deliberately disconnected for that end reveal made that climactic exchange between the characters of Deepika Padukone and Naseeruddin Shah a lot more impactful. Padukone also depicts breakdowns and anxiety attacks as they are, in a remarkable performance. Also liked how they ended it with effective throwbacks to phrases like "small world" and "the past always catches up." While the songs, visuals, and some of the dialogue carry the feel of regular Bolly fare, I'm glad they don't weigh the film's engagement factor down.

The only objective of making such a movie is to showcase human emotions. This movie doesn't justify adultery or say cheating is cool. Worse, it doesn't do anything much at all. Shakun Batra does well with good cinematography. His attempt at bringing in a Sam Levinson-Luca Guadagnino type work into scenes is appreciable, much like Kapoor and Sons. So is Deepika's and Siddhanth's acting. But why cast Ananya Pandey? Her acting is so bad, she always seems like a clown in a board meeting.

Besides, there are glaring loopholes in the story. How does Zain run away from home, still manage to study in the US, scale up quick enough, return to India as a board member, start his firm, and still be young? Zain has no family? Why is Alisha onboard with cheating so quick? What is the cliffhanger even supposed to convey? 5/10 only for Deepika and Siddhant's acting, the cinematography, the music.

Doobey has been creating waves for weeks before the actual movie released and it's commendable that the person who edited the music video made the movie seem exciting. But it was far from it, none of these characters had any actual motives for acting the way they did. None of their actions seemed to fall in line with what was previously established about them (which wasn't much to begin with) The so-called "deep", "complex" backstories each character had fell flat too since they seemed to come off as excuses rather than actual explanations.

The dialogues seemed so off, I found myself questioning whether people actually talk like this. Maybe an OTT release is subjected to comparatively low censorship but does that mean the word "f-ck" gets thrown around like confetti in every dialogue? It just comes across as lazy writing.

I was hoping there'd be no glorification of infidelity and we'd be able to at least empathize with the characters for cheating on their partners. None of the problems they faced were beyond the ordinary and didn't justify their motives to cheat. Are we supposed to believe that actual grown-up adults approach their problems like 16-year old's?

I wouldn't blame the actors for the bad performances since it was evident that they weren't given too much to work with anyway. All of the glitz and glamour, none of the substance.