There are certain unfortunate projects that get stalled for various reasons and then suddenly get pulled out of the forgotten hat when one of its leading actors turns into a big 'in-thing' delivering few major hits gaining all public and media attention. I LOVE NY is also one of those stuck projects now releasing in 2015 after almost 3 years of its completion and repeatedly announced release dates in 2013. Also as I can recall, I sometimes heard its title as I LOVE NEW YORK instead of I LOVE NEW YEAR in the past, but maybe it's a misconception caused due to some vaguely passed information.
Anyway moving ahead, the storyline actually suits both New York and New Year in the title, as it revolves around an unintentional mistake made by a drunken man (Sunny) on a New Year's eve, entering an apartment with the same address in a different city (New York) with his key fitting into the door-lock without any problems. The apartment belongs to a girl (Kangna) who is waiting for her boyfriend and wishing to get engaged in the same evening celebrating a different new-year beginning of her lonely life.
To be honest there is no problem as such in the basic idea to make a romantic comedy on the lines of many American rom-coms revolving around a particular unexpected incident happening between two strangers. Plus both the stars here (Sunny Deol &Kangna Ranuat) try to lift up the film decently without any signs of disinterest along with the fine cameos by Reema Lagoo, Prem Chopra and Maya Alagh. Though Navin Chowdhary as Kangna's boyfriend remains annoying due to his accent in particular, yet the performances are not the ones that disappoint quite surprisingly, but it's the writing, execution and a completely dull script progression that forces you to rate this film as strictly avoidable.
For instance, the director duo remains confused between how to portray their key characters on screen, as either complete Americans or Indians living abroad with a Punjabi style. Moreover, is it always necessary to present Sunny Deol as a Punjabi? Because despite having all westerns living standards visible on the screen, as usual there is a Punjabi based song sung by him and friends in the beginning and a deliberately added fight scene too in the end as expected.
The lazy, uninteresting background score keeps contributing to the unentertaining two hours throughout. And I was disgustingly shocked to hear an abusive Punjabi phrase used repeatedly in the backdrop saying 'Oh Tuhadi Bhain Di.......!" Logic goes for a toss in the writing department too when we see a wrong person catching the flight landing into New York, easily entering a different house with the same address and the girl changing her mind about her love-life so quickly in a meeting of just few hours.
In short, the only merit of the film is its few good tracks including a remix of R. D. Burman's "Aaja Meri Jaan". But since music videos & film songs have been the forte of the director duo Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru since the late 90s, the soundtrack had to be good as per their set reputation in the trade. However I wish they had seriously worked on the film's script, concept and execution too just like they do in the picturisation of their impressive music videos and film songs.
