Loveyapa

Despite its facetious tone and Chandan's genuine desire for sensitivity, Gaurav's transgressions convey more harassment than hormones. Treading on offensive territory, treating it lightly for laughs was rampant in masalas of yore but doesn't bode well for modern love. A lot of the jokes would still sound funny if the actors had the slightest bit of comic timing. Like the scene where Bani rattles off a list of rules and restrictions in one long breath while also responding to Gaurav's loony interjections in the same vein. The entire sequence is a droll dialogue bombardment whose punches don’t land in Junaid trying too hard and Khushi simply parroting her lines. Khushi fares better in emotional scenes but her chemistry with Junaid has the passion of a toothpaste campaign.

Loveyapa wants to cram a lot into its runtime- commentary on Gen-Z being obsessed with their phones, online trolling, deepfakes, body shaming, AI… it gets a bit too much to handle. While the first half is about the guy finding out about the girl’s undisclosed exes, the second half is about what she finds in her boyfriend’s phone. Ample scope for drama…. but the editing isn’t crisp, and by the time these two sort their trust issues, you wish they would call the wedding off and khatam this siyapa. The leads here try hard. Really hard. Junaid’s deer-stuck-in-headlights expression is perpetual, as is Khushi’s 120-watt smile. While she has improved by leaps and bounds since The Archies, Junaid’s performance feels like the camera was turned on as he was rehearsing the scenes on set. Romance on-screen doesn’t come naturally to him, but hey, it’s their first big screen outing.

Both leads are coming off debuts (Maharaj, The Archies) that didn’t exactly fly. Here they fare better, but only just. It doesn’t help that Junaid Khan, while being perfectly pleasant, doesn’t possess much of an edge: maybe that kind of personable-but-unremarkable fellow is just what this movie needed, but there really isn’t much sizzle he creates with Khushi Kapoor, who’s got a little more going on in the personality department. It’s the sidebar — played out between Gucci’s sister (Tanvika Parlikar) and her fiance (Kiku Sharda), the latter guarding his cellphone with his life — which delves into the problems of plus-size people, and how that leads to low self-esteem issues, that is more interesting.