Radhe Shyam

Sadly, Radhe Shyam takes a familiar route with predictable elements. The film falls flat because it literally has nothing new to offer. We are shown Vikramaditya’s ‘almost’ nomadic life, and his flirtationships with women. When he meets Prerana in the most dramatic way, we are not emotionally invested in it. In a love story like this, the emotional quotient needs to be solid for you to feel what the director wants to convey. For a film like Radhe Shyam, which talks about unconditional love, time and destiny, having a stale screenplay is a huge disappointment. However, the second half of Radhe Shyam will try to suck you into its world. When Prerana and Vikramaditya’s courtship moves to the next stage, the screenplay gets better. There’s tension, a sense of longing and anticipation.

This pretty much sums up this film. The script, such as it is, is clueless about why the characters do the things they do. Prerna happens to be a doctor in her spare time (when she is not swanning about in trains, her long hair in Rapunzel ringlets), with a mum, dad, sister, grandmum, dutifully showing up to deliver their lines and vanishing. There’s a train accident. A car crash. And an almighty Titanic-like ship being swallowed up by the ocean, with our hero, labelled adoringly ‘India Ka Nostradamus’ and ‘Palmistry Ka Einstein’, emerging wet and victorious, on the other side. The ship, in case you were wondering, is called Da Vinci. All through this, we are given ‘gyaan’ on how ‘all science is 99 percent’. Huh? What’s the remaining one percent for? More such lines keep spilling out from our palmist’s indefatigable guru (Sathyaraj) back in India. Going by their unshakeable belief in ‘haath ki lakeer’, you wonder exactly what the purpose of this film is: is it to justify superstition?