Save The Da(y)Te
When bride Sunaina gets the jitters at her destination wedding and runs away, bestie Avi (Radhika Madan) and wedding planner Jay (Amol Parashar) who’ve never met before, set off to find her. It sparks off a spirited chemistry between the two.
In the prevailing season of anthologies and short stories, director Ruchir Arun and writer Monisha Thyagarajan make a peppy, contemporary film with a brief tour of Goa as the backdrop, mercifully staying away from sorpotel and feni kind of cliches. The easy performances of Radhika and Amol make it pretty watchable.
Quaranteen Crush
It can’t be anything but a crush when yet-to-turn-18 Maninder (Mihir Ahuja) with barely a trace of facial hair finds Nimmi, a girl from Canada (Kajol Chugh), quarantined all alone in the bungalow across his. Like him, she can strum a guitar too. Director Tahira Kashyap Khurrana and writer Ghazal Dhariwal bring in food and lingerie as Maninder secretly befriends Nimmi amidst masks, social distancing and sanitisers. It’s a cute watch.
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Star Host
A girl on her own discovering herself. Didn’t Kangana Ranaut’s Queen do just that years ago and with great flair? Director Anand Tiwari sets up a new friendship in Mahabaleshwar which is more a self-discovery and growing up process for Tara (Simran Jehani) than a romance with StayBnB host Aditya (Rohit Saraf). What’s on the menu of this short film is something we’ve all tried several times before.
Interview
Kerala boy Rajeev (Neeraj Madhav), nervous as he fidgets with his watch strap, and confident Mumbai girl Shahana (Zayn Marie Khan) meet at an interview, vying for the same job in a large electronics and appliances store. With customers and sales personnel milling around, Shahana preps Rajeev for the interview, unwittingly giving a glimpse into her personal life. A friendship springs between them. With Arati Raval writing, Sachin Kundalkar directs a rather likeable story with a heart.
She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not
Perhaps the only part that makes this different is that it’s a gay romance. Otherwise, Muskaan (Sanjeeta Bhattacharya) breaks the fourth wall (the talking to the camera technique so overused in recent times) as she falls in love with someone she thinks is way out of her league, the new tigress in the office Tarasha (Saba Azad). The ad campaign meetings, the office setting, not even the romance itself, convey anything new. As one line goes, all relationships, whether gay or straight, “Are dumbfucking universal”. You can say that again, director Danish Aslam.
Ishq Mastana
One gay story, one political with a revolution brewing, and this season of half-a-dozen episodes gets all its flavours. Kabir (Skand Thakur) is looking for a quick one on the rebound when he meets Mehr (Tanya Maniktala) who calls him to meet her at a protest rally. Director Jaydeep Sarkar sneers at vegetarians with eyebrows shooting up in disgust at the word, and has lines like, “Aren’t you ashamed to call it a biryani? Call it pulao.” He strews the dialogues with the ‘f’ word including, “This is supposed to be a rebound f…ing f…”. There’s also youth philosophy like Mehr mouthing, “I don’t do this to change the world; I do it so the world doesn’t change me.” Am sure you get the picture as a friendship beyond the f…. blooms and Kabir who has nothing to do with the protests is converted. I’d say, watch it. It’s ballsy.