Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2

Prateek Vats, Shubham and Dibakar Banerjee's screenplay, however, is messy and confusing. Prateek Vats, Shubham and Dibakar Banerjee's dialogues are witty in places. Sadly, many cuss words are muted and that affects the impact. Dibakar Banerjee's direction is weak. From his first film KHOSLA KA GHOSLA [2006], he's known for hatke execution. But it has never happened that one gets clueless about the goings-on in his films. Sadly, that’s exactly what happens in LOVE SEX AUR DHOKHA 2. There are several moments where the viewers will be left scratching their heads. And the scenes that make sense are not as impactful. The first track has its share of arresting moments. But the impact is limited as it’s akin to watching a show like ‘Bigg Boss’ on the big screen. Thankfully, the track ends on an amusing note. The second track seems intriguing. However, the writers and director leave many questions unanswered.

Banerjee has taken on quite a few subjects and blitzed them into a pungent-tasting smoothie that you cannot really put down. Working with Eeb Allay Ooo! (2019) writers Prateek Vats and Shubham, he launches a scathing attack on our insatiable appetite to peep through the keyhole. Bullying and cyberbullying, the farce of reality television, content creation and the churn that governs its steady evolution, the ominous arrival of the metaverse, the evolution of news channels that we’ve been all privy to, and, of course the vast gulf between the off-cam and on-cam world — LSD 2 does not spare a moment to throw shade at the cesspool of the screen. What gives the film its serrated edge is that though the shocking material gets the ‘the future looks like this’ treatment in terms of its grim, sardonic tone and ubiquity of algorithms, deepfake and AI, all of which we still treat as concepts yet to arrive — the plot is bang in middle of our collective lived experience.

This is not just an angry film. ‘Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2’ is a scream of rage, mixed with a confounded befuddlement. It’s been a while since I’ve seen an Indian film as politically and socially trenchant as this one. Up till now, I’ve always thought of LSD as the director’s best film: it was a clear first on many counts, a meta-film that spoke to our internalisation of films-as-pop-culture, seeped into our DNA, and troubling questions of the barrier between what can be seen, and what should be seen, while keeping an eye on the moral centre. This ‘LSD’ redux is not as original, but is as sharp, and as impactful. When Banerjee cuts us, we bleed.