Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar highlights why Bollywood isn’t making great love stories anymore

Ranbir Kapoor is back in theatres with Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar, playing a break-up expert. Simplified, he plays a professional who offers specialised solution packages to clients wishing to end relationships in their personal lives. If the job profile seems outlandish, Bollywood tried introducing it at least once before, in the 2012 release Jodi Breakers starring R. Madhavan and Bipasha Basu. That film was dismissed as a one-off idea back then, and crashed at the box office upon release. Over a decade later, an industry top gun as Kapoor tries regaining his loverboy groove of many a past hit using the template.

If Ranbir’s protagonist Mickey vocationally stands for a sort of cynicism towards love and commitment that increasingly seems to consume modern relationships, the trait is not new to the actor’s cinematic choices. He has essayed broadly similar roles in Bachna Ae Haseeno (2008), Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013) and Tamasha (2015). In each of these films, he starts off as a relationship-phobic young man with a slant at philandering, till the right girl enters the script to render a plot twist or two, and teach the hero a lesson in love and commitment. In Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar (TJMM), that twist comes with Shraddha Kapoor’s Tinni. Mickey falls for Tinni on a holiday trip to Spain, but the girl, unknown to both, ends up hiring his service as a break-up expert to end their relationship. Aptly, the film is directed by Luv Ranjan, Bollywood’s anti-romance specialist with a resume flaunting Pyaar Ka Punchnama (2011), Akaash Vani (2013), Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 (2015) and Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2018).

The world of Mickey and Tinni does not reveal much of originality, and the film’s second half rests on feel-good family melodrama that leads to a box office-friendly climax. But not before underlining an interesting trend. TJMM, like most new-age Hindi films hawking a romantic theme or characters, seems keen to break away from Bollywood norms but ultimately gives in to demands driven by ticket window economics.

 

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On one hand, the streak of selfishness that the storyline gives to its lead pair makes the premise interesting. In Bollywood, where selfless love has traditionally been formula for box office gold, Mickey and Tinni are ready to bare their unsavoury side when a conflict of interests strikes, making love the casualty. Yet, for all their cosmetic cool ‘realism’ and carefully crafted ‘flaws’, these characters and the universe they live in are a reminder that a big budget rom-com with an A-list male star cannot afford to stray drastically from conventions. For all its new-age vibes, Luv Ranjan’s latest is caught between an urge to be different and its inability to do so.

The dilemma is not specific to Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar. It has hounded almost every love story that Bollywood has produced in recent years, and probably explains why the Hindi film industry no longer makes great love stories as it used to. A filmmaking milieu that is increasingly turning cynical while trying to imagine life, love and characters realistically, the scope for romance that inspires was fated to shrink.

For most Gen Z Bollywood buffs, the idea of a romantic classic continues to be Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. The Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol starrer shaped mainstream Hindi cinema’s idea of romance as well as reorganised the industry’s notions of storytelling and characterisation upon release in Diwali 1995. No romantic hit in nearly three decades since DDLJ has come close to matching the box office records that Aditya Chopra’s film created, or its overwhelming popularity. The socio-political transformation in the post-DDLJ decades has not favoured feel-good romances, especially over the past decade. Also, many big-budget love stories made for the Hindi screen in recent years have merely tried to replicate what worked for DDLJ, setting up stories that blend NRI and heartland flavours through plots and characters.

Originality, of course, has never been among Bollywood’s strong points. The few romantic hits produced over the past decade or so that are worth a mention would invariably fall in one of two categories: The film in question is either an update of what has already worked in the past. Or, the film is a remake of an earlier hit, or adapted from a written work. Coming-of-age romances, packaged as comedy or tragedy, have been the most common instances of the first category — recall Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, Rockstar, Raanjhanaa, Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na or Jab We Met. Written works adapted for the Hindi screen in recent decades include Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas, which saw Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s SRK-starrer of the same name and Anurag Kashyap’s Dev.D. Bhansali would go on to spice up William Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet, setting the stage for scorching chemistry between Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh in Goliyon Ki Raasleela: Ram-Leela. Kashyap’s Manmarziyaan and Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil were attempts to contemporise the age-old love triangle. Aashiqui 2 worked as a musical love story fraught with ego, pride and ambition that reminded many of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s classic Abhimaan starring Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri. Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera starring Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha found inspiration in O. Henry’s short story, The Last Leaf.

These new-age romances have seen varying degrees of critical and commercial success, but hardly any one of these films bear the resonance of films from preceding decades such as Guide, Mughal-e-Azam, Love Story, Bobby, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak or Maine Pyar Kiya. Probably, it is tougher to make a love story in these times. Filmmakers seems to be at a loss over how to push romance to a new direction for the Hindi screen. An obvious problem is the receding importance of Hindi film music — the all-important element that drives romantic hits. Also, for love stories to take a mature step to the next level, a play of sexual tension and passion becomes inevitable. Bollywood is yet to be wholly receptive to that idea. Ranbir Kapoor flashing rippling abs and Shraddha Kapoor flaunting hourglass frame in bikini may serve as lessons in anatomy, but it’s far from the sexual chemistry one would wish for.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and journalist who specialises in popular culture.

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