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LOVE IN NEPAL Directed by Rajat Mukherjee. Starring Sonu Nigam, Fllora Saini, Rajpal Yadav, Vijay Raaz

'LOVE IN NEPAL' TOO FROTHY TO BE FUN
By Subhash K. Jha. (9 March 2004)

Rajat Mukherjee knows the ad world well. He fills up the pauses in the soundtrack with chuckles and some naughty knocks on the knuckles as 'Harry' (Sonu Nigam) meets 'Sally' (Fllora Saini) in the boardroom.

There are instant fireworks. And for the rest of the film the pair flare their nostrils and shrug at each other like Tom and Jerry...or like the lead couple in Rob Reiner's romantic comedy "When Harry Met Sally".

Trouble with this film about accidents and crime in foreign land is it's too frothy to be fun. The characters are so much in keeping with the age old rules of romantic comedy that you know for sure the couple will bicker just long enough for that mid-narrative smooch that would take their breath away.

Wish we would feel the same way. After a reasonably well-paced first-half where Mukherjee lets Sonu have a ball as the stereotypically rakish ad man, the second-half plunges into a frantic crime caper with assorted villains running around with loaded guns and other energetic ammunition that give the film a certain febrile spontaneity.

So what's the deal? Abby meets Maxi, hates her guts all the way to scenic Pokhra in Nepal, silences her screeching and flaring with a longish smooch, gets caught in bed with a woman he wouldn't be caught dead with. But ha! She is. Dead as a doormat.

Police investigation has some funny moments, for example Abby's devoted assistant Sandy (Shweta Keshwani) dodging the cops when she realises her boss is the prime suspect.

Some of the fringe characters appear modelled on real-life people, but are much too conscious of their casual postures to be real people.

In fact the film would've worked much better if the splashy and blithe spirit had been compounded by a spirit of gravity. Mukherjee stretches the just-for-fun mood a little too thinly over the plot.

Nonetheless the film is zany in fits. Sameer Arora's dialogues are the kind of outrageous banter that people in corporate houses exchange to entertain themselves when not working.

The cast is pleasant enough, though neither frightfully glamorous nor charming. With his carefully worked-out look and eyebrow-raised arrogance, Sonu moves many steps ahead of his earlier acting opportunities. The film belongs to Sonu.

Rajpal Yadav brings in a rather interesting subplot about the difference between physical beauty and intangible desires, and how the absence of the former and the presence of the latter can create enormous fissures in the human psyche.

But by then the film has moved too far away from any claim to seriousness. "Love In Nepal" isn't quite the fun-filled follow-up to "Love In Simla" and "Love In Tokyo" that one hoped it would be.

However, it isn't bereft of intelligence. And compared with the other, dark and ugly release this week, it at least spares you the agony of crassness.