Luv Ka The End is quite a surprise, really. From the promos, it may look like a shallow teen movie with newcomers. But it will definitely surprise you with its fresh cast and a different, almost self-deprecating treatment.

Rhea (Shraddha Kapoor), who is known as a “behenji” in her college, falls in love with Luv (Taha Shah), the college dude. But soon, she finds out that there love affair was just a pretense to earn some points in his Rich-Boys Club. Heartbroken, Rhea decides to take revenge on Luv and turn him into a mockery.

Produced by Y-Films, the new youth movie wing of Yash Raj Films, Luv Ka The End is a breezy movie and youngsters are sure to like it. Performances by all the main actors are satisfactory. Taha Shah may not be the next Ranvir Singh, but the way he has put himself in the “Mera Jism Jism, Mera Badan Badan” is really brave.

Any actor, who is willing to wear a ghagra choli and dance on an item number, deserves attention. Shraddha Kapoor, who is Shakti Kapoor’s daughter and was last seen in the flop “Teen Patti” does a fairly good job.

But the rest of the cast disappoints. Instead of writing new-age and real characters, the director chooses to use the same old clichéd characterization. The girls who played Rhea’s friends are straight out of any Hindi, English, Tamil or any other teen movie in the world. We expected more originality from a banner owned by Yash Raj Films.

The low brow marketing of this movie may not have created a huge hype around it, but this just might work in favor of the movie. The audience goes into the theater with no expectations and end up getting pleasantly surprised. Don’t miss Luv Ka The End this weekend!

Blog of India rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Do Dooni Chaar, a Walt Disney film that is set to release today, seems to be quite impressive as far as the promos go. The typical tale of a Delhi family, which is middle class and therefore has all the problems that a middle class family faces, is quite a comeback for actor Neetu Singh who has been missing in action for some time now.

It is after 30 years that the Bollywood couple has returned to get together once again on the big screen. This comedy movie, which at the outset seems to be aimed at young children, also carries a noble message, or so the actors claim.

For the actors, the nostalgia of the 70s suddenly comes flushing back. With their son already making his own mark in the industry, the proud parents appear happy on the sets, as well as the movie. Perhaps it is this glow that will work for the movie, or the fact that many will simply flock to the theatres to see Neetu after such a long time.

Walt Disney is betting on the ‘family’ image and hoping that families with young children would definitely come to watch this clean, family flick that looks extremely promising from where we stand.

Akshay Kumar has reasons to smile. His much hyped ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ has managed to build a good hype amongst the audiences, something which is reflecting from the favourable response that it has received via a healthy advance booking. Though quite a few multiplexes and single screens opened their advance booking only on Wednesday (which is the norm), some major chains (like PVR) opened it early as Sunday to gauge audience’s interest in the film. Thankfully, it was all positive, something which would definitely have contributed to sudden plans for paid previews that were hosted on Thursday.

However, Sajid Nadiadwala and Co. took a guarded approach as instead of going ballistic with paid previews and playing multiple shows all through the evening and night, they kept it low profile with only a show each at select multiplexes in major cities. Moreover, the show timings were also quite late in the night with some of them beginning as late as 11 PM. Obviously, the makers and especially the leading man Akshay Kumar have learnt the lesson from ‘Chandni Chowk To China’ debacle where negative reviews had started flowing as early as 9 PM Thursday night once the first paid preview (at 6PM) had come to a close.

Though sources indicate that the makers of ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ are quite confident of their product, it made sense to have a restricted viewing of the film rather than it being a wholesome affair, lest it led to any negativity. In any case, record number of prints are being circulated across the country which means that opening weekend collections should be quite a bountiful.

There have been murmurs around the promos not being really strong for this Akshay and Kareena starrer. However, one just hopes that the team of ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ is hiding the real stuff in the background rather than revealing it all in the promos itself; a mistake that recent release ‘Paying Guest’ made and suffered badly. It would be better for a film with such a huge scale to let audiences warm up to the film and that’s a path this Sabbir Khan directed film seems to be taking.

As are the indicators right now, the film should fetch good numbers in the opening weekend even if they aren’t record breaking per se. While ‘Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi’ and ‘Singh Is Kinng’ hold the record of netting 40 crores or more in their first week (with ‘Ghajini’ going through the ceiling with a 60 crores + opening, it would be fair if ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ crosses 35 crores mark at the least. This is where the film seems to be headed as well and even though a few may complain that these collections would be less for an Akshay Kumar biggie, one has to keep in mind that he has suffered two recent flops in ‘Chandni Chowk To China’ and ’8X10 Tasveer’, something which is looming large on audience’s mind. Moreover, 35 crores is not a bad number too as long as the film can sustain in weeks to come.

With ‘Shortkut – The Con Is On’ being the only major release in week to follow and ‘Jashnn’ arriving on 17th July, ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ now has to be just a decent enough film to keep showing steady collections before ‘Luck’ arrives on 24th July.