Director: Imtiaz Ali
Producer: Saif Ali Khan, Dinesh Vijan
Star cast: Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Rahul Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Florence Brudenell-Bruce
Release Date: 31/07/2009

Love stories has always been the centre of bollywood, be it Yash-raj flicks of 80s to the present day budding and experimental directors like Kunal Kohli, Karan Johar or the more recent one-Imtiaz Ali. With ‘Chor Bazaari’ & ‘Twist’ running over almost all the FM channels from past few weeks, Love Aaj Kal endorses music by Pritam where the film’s lingo travel multiple continents and different eras off course.

Saif Ali Khan’s debut production ‘Love Aaj kal’ is directed by film director & writer Imtiaz Ali, known for his run-away hit ‘Jab we met’. The movie stars Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone in lead roles where Rahul Khanna and Rishi Kapoor are in supporting roles with Neetu Singh in a guest appearance  in the climax.

Storyline of the film is divided into two eras ‘Love Aaj’(2009) & ‘Love Kal’(1965), where  Saif  plays two characters – Jai Vardhan Singh in the previous one and Veer Singh, a Sikh (the younger version of Rishi Kapoor) in the latter.

Jai and Meera are very practical lovebirds of  today’s  age with modern thoughts who part from their relationship of two years as Meera want to go back to India for her career in restoration and Jai has plans to fulfill his long awaited passion of getting an entry in golden globe, Sanfrancisco.On the other hand Veer’s love for Harleen is a typical love story where traditions, customs, norms of culture and fear to go against the elders wishes to get married fails and evokes veer to get his girl that makes him travel long distances all the way from Delhi to Kolkata only to catch a glimpse of her where the grace of god helps him win her hand from her mother. Ultimately, both the two stories end up on  the realization of true love as the ultimate happiness of life and gives us the message that love of 1965 and that of 2009 has remained the same.

As both the stories run parallel, it sometimes become  tricky to understand the plot, but an attention to the theme and a flashback of the events narrated by paji (Rishi Kapoor) certainly helps to co-relate what the script-writer has actually intended to say here.

Love Aaj Kal is an off-beat story like ali’s previous creations viz – ‘Socha Na Tha’ & ‘Jab We Met’ where a novel idea of a break-up with a celebration in presence of  buddies  becomes difficult to digest, but the consensus of both the partners in not departing on a sour note like the usual regular ones and further constantly reminding each other of the dos & don’t s just after the breakup provide us with food-for-thought. The concept of  a love couple  departing their ways happily, the daring to confess and speak the truth about their true feelings for each other and all those things which they actually didn’t liked about each other are really appreciable and appears more real. This is Imtiaz’s specialty of handling the true emotions also depicted in his earlier flicks i.e. between Viren & aditi of  ‘Socha na tha’ and geet & aditya of  ‘Jab we met’ that actually connects the audience with the characters of the film.

Besides this, Delhi is  rediscovered again as the land of ‘love’  by means of a legendary wedding band called as ‘Jea Band’ which is Delhi’s one of the oldest wedding brass bands. Also the vintage cars, proper attire & the city’s beautiful roads along with places like Mandawa, Rajasthan, Patiala & Punjab captured by the cinematographer gives the essence and feel of Sikh culture.

Old bollywood hits like ‘Man dole tan dole’ from ‘Nagin’ and ‘Jhumka gira re’ from ‘Mera Saaya’ linger in our ear bud while ‘Aahun Aahun’, a Punjabi-English-Hindi fusion captivates our mind where Saif appears unique in one of the getups of Rock-n-Roll legend Elvis Presley.

Love Aaj Kal is basically a commercial flick that earlier witnessed protest for saif’s trimmed beard by the Sikh organizations.

Theatrical Trailer