Milenge Milenge

Film: "Milenge Milenge"
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Satish Shah, Delnaz Paul, Aarti Chabria, Kiron Kher, Himani Shivpuri, Satish Kaushik 
Directer: Satish Kaushik
Rating: 2.5
There is a kind of subverted joy in watching Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor play a Valentinian romance with a full-throttle gusto.
"Milenge Milenge" took its time to come to the theatres. Yes, it is old fashioned in theme. But not dated. The material which must have been quite bulky by the time Kaushik was done with shooting has been cut and pasted with restrained enthusiasm. What we have is a paper-thin, sometimes cute at times annoying rom-com where Destiny plays a pivotal part. Kiss-mat, anyone? Yup, intimacy is fugitive between Shahid and Kareena. But they nonetheless look like a real pair.
The plot plods at a pace that suggests love is just about the only force that keeps the universe moving. Both the protagonists play professionals. But we hardly see them work except on their ever-palpitating hearts.
The plot invents various devices from missed flights to truant elevators to hero in drag and heroine in glycerine to keep the love birds apart for two hours. There are some heartwarming moments depicting random hearts pumping into a collective despair as time ticks by.
There's no attempt to pull punches, no over-clever dialogues and no effort to paint and gloss the feeling of love with sassy 'cool' lines. Director Satish Kaushik plays the romance on the straight and narrow path. And that's just about the most comforting aspect of this basic simple and predictable boy-meets-girl tale.
The principal performances range from precocious to authentic. Surprisingly Shahid tends to go overboard in the early comic sequences. But he makes up for the excesses in the second-half with expressions of a lover's anguish over Cupid's awry arrow.
Kareena looks gorgeous and slim in some scenes, gorgeous and relatively plump in other scenes. In totality the chemistry is quite palpable, much more so than in some of the other much-hyped love stories that arrived lately with a bang and fizzled out without the pang of love being palpable in a single frame.
In "Milenge Milenge" you do FEEL for the lovers. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we know what the film's lovers do not. That the actors playing them were involved not too long ago. But hush! New Delhi, July 5 (IANS) Six years since it was launched, ex-couple Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor starrer "Milenge Milenge" is finally set to see the light of the day Friday despite the differences between the duo.
Produced and distributed by Boney Kapoor at a budget of Rs.30 crore, the romantic comedy also stars Satish Shah, Kirron Kher and Delnaaz Paul.
Though it is coming after a long delay, director Satish Kaushik claims the film's story is fresh and something not seen before. "The treatment is totally different and it has been very interestingly made. It has been shot in Delhi entirely and Himesh Reshammiya has given fantastic music to it. It will be definitely like by audiences," Kaushik told IANS. The story revolves around Amit (Shahid) and Priya (Kareena), who meet at a youth festival in Bangkok. The attraction is instant and throughout the event they stick to each other. So far so good. But as the festival ends, their friendship comes to an end too when Amit breaks Priya’s trust and she decides end their friendship.
Amit tries to regain Priya's trust by telling her that they are destined to be together, but Priya feels if it is so then destiny will help them in finding each other in Delhi again. They bid adieu to each other without exchanging contact details about each other.
As luck would have it, years go by and they they never meet each other in Delhi. In fact, both of them decide to marry someone else. Then fate conspires to bring them back together and they make one last attempt to find each other just before their respective marriages. Been in the making since 2004, the long pending movie is said to be a remake of the Hollywood movie "Serendipity".
Subject to Shahid and Kareena's infamous split, "Milenge Milenge" has also had a slew of controversies like the stars playing truant in promoting the movie.
Boney Kapoor is leaving no stone unturned in promoting the movie. Rumours are also rife that Kareena was miffed with him for the promotional line "They are back together" in the promos, which implied a reunion between herself and Shahid.
In order to promote the movie, the producer also launched a forgiveness index meter and a photo frame with a white rose that users can send to the person they want to forgive.
In a parallel promotion, young girls are offering white artificial roses to people at select multiplexes and malls to gift to anybody they hold a grudge against. "The thought was triggered by the Ambani brothers Mukesh and Anil burying the hatchet," Boney had said. "Relationships are built over the years but even the closest can fall apart because of small misunderstandings. Why not, in retrospect, remember the good times, get over the grudge, and forgive the person we are mad with?"
The song "Sab kuch khatam ho kar bhi" penned by Sameer was also added to the promos to create obvious resonance for the one-time couple.
Bollywood.com Rating: 2.5