Director : Nitesh Tiwari
Cast : Varun Dhawan, Janhvi Kapoor, Manoj Pahwa, Anjuman Saxena, Gunjan Doshi
Story : Piyush Gupta, Shreyas Jain, Nikhil Mehrotra, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, Nitesh Tiwari
Plot : Ajay (Varun Dhawan) is a narcissistic and image-conscious grade-school teacher who is barely able to teach History to his students. Known as Ajju bhaiya by his followers, he is solely focused on his appearance, prioritizing impeccable grooming, a well-toned physique and basically, aims at carving a caricature image of someone who is a Mr Perfect. Regrettably, his students’ educational progress appears to be of little concern to him, and he seems indifferent to his wife, Nisha’s profound unhappiness. Nisha, played by Janhvi Kapoor, has epilepsy but is downright honest to his partner where she bares it all to him before getting married as she seeks a genuine partner who accepts her as she is. She is sensible, street-smart and sensitive and possibly, polar-opposite of her newly-wedded husband.
With his pretentious and callous nature, Ajay somehow befools Nisha and gets married to her but shows his true colors right after the wedding when he sees Nisha getting a seizure. He lies to mostly everyone, right from his father (Manoj Pahwa) to his students to keep his image on-point to the point where he even says, ”ki maahaul aisa banaao ki loggon ko maahaul yaad rahe, result nahi”. Well, it actually sums up the character.
Ajay hides Nisha away from public view and confines her to their home, always in the presence of his parents. This isolation is a result of Nisha’s epilepsy, as Ajay is deeply afraid that her having a seizure in public would damage his carefully crafted image. She slowly but steadily understands how she will get everything but not love & respect in this marriage and begins to get even more distanced from Ajay where her initial feelings start turning into disgust.
After an ugly incident in the school where Ajay slaps a student who turns out to be the son of an MLA, he is suspended from the school which leads to him getting the taste of public-shame for the 1st time which sets his world upside down. He, then, plans to head to Europe, with an agenda to make educative videos for free for his students around the cities which were monumental in respect to World War 2. After all, he has to wash his tarnished image, he acts coy yet again before his father to get the money needed for the trip and gets sympathy before his wife and mother by playing the victim card.
He travels to Europe with Nisha and the day-to-day events and life-changing incidents throw inside a ray of change, empathy and self-realization time-to-time inside him. But does all this last or is just temporary? Does Ajay actually realize the gravitas of his companionship with Nisha? The second half takes the audience in that direction where once will remain engaged till the climax as it is a rare one-of-a-kind story which Bollywood love-stories have not seen till now.
What We Loved : Janhvi Kapoor as Nisha has given such an earnest and adorable performance which is nothing but captivating. The actress’s eyes do the talking but when she speaks her dialogues, the effect she leaves just doubles up. You tend to feel for the character of Nisha and even tear up at times as you will keep thinking that she doesn’t deserve this again and again. This happens primarily because it is evident that the actor came prepared on the sets with the character-arc and delivers profoundly. When Ajay says after a lot of introspection, ”Humara beech me kuch bhi common nahi hai”, I replied quickly in my mind that yes exactly, there is nothing common and that is where Janhvi comes across as a winner as an actor because even when she is not speaking or expressing, the audience speaks for her. Her lines land and how, her expressions do the trick and you feel happiness in Nisha’s happiness and sadness when she goes through all the miseries.
What We Liked : The brilliant background score, the soothing songs and the effective music by Mithoon stands like the solid pillar of Bawaal where it acts as the perfect ingredient required to assist the story-telling. After a long time, all original songs of the film have a soul. To add to this, the twist in the film which is primarily linking the remorseful stories of World War 2 which act as weapons of self-realization and reality-checks for Ajay beautifully navigated by Nisha is the surprise-package of the film. Telling the story through these incidents and making the audience feel how Ajay sees a change in his attitude could have never been guessed after watching the trailer and Nitesh Tiwari did it yet again with his genius mind.
Varun Dhawan as Ajju showed yet again that if given the right script and the right director, he can do the unexpected with a sense of honesty. Varun shines in his scenes where he seldom opens up the real Ajay and shows his vulnerable side. His character’s arrogance will definitely make you hate him and that is what the job of a good actor is in which Dhawan succeeds.
What We Didn’t : We wish that the second half could have been better trimmed and edited. After a point, it seems dragged as both the characters and audience know what will lie ahead of them. Also, the climax scene where Ajay meets his students who passed with flying colors doesn’t land for the viewers. Instead, they would have seen the next steps of Ajay and Nisha as a couple.
Overall Rating : 3/5
