Jab We Met is very enjoyable. After a long time, we have a fabulous romantic comedy.
The plot is not original, but the script is well written. A big part of this movie is on Karina's shoulders and she carries it really well. She rocks! This is probably her best performance so far.
Two songs are very melodious and with nice poetry: Aaoge Tum (Music: Sandesh Shandilya, Lyrics: Nida Fazli?, Singer: Ustad Rashid Khan) and Tum Se Hi (Music: Pritam, Lyrics: Irshad Kamil, Singer: Mohit Chauhan). They are well placed in the movie. The placement of other songs could have been better though. They don’t move the story forward but don’t do much damage to the flow either.
Some moments in the movie were really touching and well executed: When Aditya accepts that he’s in love with Geet and says “Yes, I like you a lot, but hey, that’s my problem!”, when during their second stay in a (this time literally decent!) motel she says something like "Kitni stupid hoon main, is liye meri ye haalat hui hai" and starts crying, when Geet finally realizes what her heart wants, a train passes in the background and she feels "jaise koi train chhut rahi ho…”
Imtiaz Ali has grown as a director after his first movie Socha Na Tha (which was quite likeable). The opening sequence: when Aditya leaves his cell phone and car keys and walks into the streets dropping his tie on the sidewalk, was very impressive.
I am looking forward to Imtiaz Ali’s next movie.
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Also, I highly recommend Manorama Six Feet Under and Johny Gaddar to everyone who likes off-beat movies. Both are very well-made and well-acted movies in genres that are almost absent in Bollywood nowadays. The former is a Bollywood noir set up in a remote village in Rajasthan (spectacular visuals). And the latter is a suspense thriller, in which the audience knows who the culprit is, but the actors in the movie don't, and the movie is about how they find it out! Look out for pop-culture references to the movies from 70's. There are so many.
Unfortunately, No Smoking, on which I had high hopes (especially because of the names that are associated with the movie - Vishal Bhardwaj and Gulzar), didn't get any good reviews. It looks like Anurag Kashyap has broken bridges with so many reviewers that many of them are reviewing his attitude rather than his movie. (Read Khalid Mohammed's review in Hindustan Times, you don't need an expert to figure out that he has personal grudges for Kashyap and that's all he talks about in his "movie" review - bad director, bad person, very arrogant, how stupid yada yada yada...) I still haven't given up on the movie though -- I will watch it as soon as I can.
