The trend of making remakes is very hot right now in Hollywood. Some of them are good, some of them are average and many fail but if you look closely you'll see one common thing. All the movies are remakes of very old movies. Now if you apply common sense, you'll ask that why do film-makers remake old movies, right? Because they think they can improve upon the originals because of the technical advancements we have achieved throughout the years. Now see what the Hindi Film Industry does. They remake a movie which was made one year ago. I'll try to elaborate this throughout the review.
SCREENPLAY/STORY - OK Jaanu is a remake of the Tamil movie O Kadhal Kanmani(2015). I had seen the movie then because there was a major uproar about it because it was Mani Ratnam's movie. The story follows Adi and Tara who fall in love, live together in an elderly couple's house. The elderly couple is portrayed by Naseeruddin Shah and Leela Samson. On observing their unconditional love, Adi and Tara understand the gravity of their relation and eventually give in to their love- wala feelings. That's it. It was an average story then and 2 years later it is still an average story, but this is bogged down by the extremely bland dialogue and exposition. It almost felt like in the screenplay where there should have been one full-stop, there there were two full-stops. Due to that the conversations were missing a beat every-time. It seemed very artificial. I maybe nitpicking but this keeps happening throughout the entire length of the movie. Now as Naseeruddin Shah is a veteran actor, he makes the dialogue sound real but it sticks out like a sore thumb every time there is a conversational scene between Aditya and Shraddha.
DIRECTION - Shaad Ali made Saathiya(2002) and Bunty aur Babli(2005) and after that took a complete nose-dive with flops like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom(2007) and Kill Dil(2014). No need to be surprised why that happened. Where Saathiya(2002) was penned by Mani Ratnam, Bunty aur Babli(2005) was penned by Aditya Chopra and Jaideep Sahni. I have been watching educational videos regarding film-making and it is difficult. I am being honest here, it is very difficult but when you are remaking something, you can clearly see where the problems were, right? Why repeat them scene by scene? The camera-work is bland and sometimes just off. Just off. Even the scenes with false tension are predictable. It should be unpredictable to the characters as well as the audience or else what is the point. Then comes the songs and the background score. It is everywhere like the Illuminati. Not a single shot has silence. Silence allows the characters, the set-up to settle in the eyes of the audience. The characters are jumping from one song to another, one frame to another so obviously the characters feel plastic and I couldn't even connect. People were leaving the hall before half-time and it is a movie with young, beautiful people who are in love. Bravo!
ACTING - Probably the worst performance yet by the leads and they have been in Aashiqui 2. So that's saying something. I am sure they are good actors but they were absolutely emotionless here. There was no chemistry, at all. On top of that there was the background score which was screaming, "FEEL THIS! FEEL THAT!". Arre! let the actors emote, please. Naseeruddin was great as usual. The actress who played Adi's sister-in-law had one scene and she nailed it. Leela Samson was bland too but I couldn't figure it whether it was because she was playing the character with Alzheimer's disease or not.
FINAL VERDICT - The only redeemable factor is how beautiful Shraddha Kapoor was looking in this movie. Go on judge me, see if I care. As far as the movie goes, wait for it to come on DVD or TV. If you want to sleep then you can probably go. You'll have a good sleep because of the 2 hour run-time. You can suffer a minor cardiac arrest due to the horrendous rendition of "Humma Humma", other than that it is a complete snooze fest. I am sure nobody from the Hindi Film Industry will be reading this but please, if you're spending so much then make a good movie because if you've nothing new to say then why say anything at all.