Love-Yatri Review: Suited best for Navratri

Cast: Aayush Sharma, Warina Hussain, Ronit Roy, Ram Kapoor

Direction: Abhiraj K Minawala 

Duration: 2 hours, 19 minutes 

Language: Hindi (U/A)

Critic's Rating: 2.5/5 

Story: Sushrut (Aayush) is a collegian in Vadodara who dreams of opening a Garba academy. When his path crosses with Michelle’s aka Manisha, an NRI business grad from London, he falls in love with her. However, her father, Sameer Patel (Ronit), is of the view that the poor boy and his rich daughter are a mismatch. So, after their Navratri celebrations, the boy and girl are forced to separate. Of course, Susu, aided by his maternal uncle, Rasik Desai (Ram Kapoor) gets on a flight to London and before you know it, he has the girl.

Review: There is nothing wrong with LoveYatri, except the fact that it is a vanilla offering minus any definite conflict. The story, as you must have gauged, is as old or should we say, as cold as the hills. The poor boy-rich girl conflict has been done to death a thousand times in mainstream Bollywood. And on many occasions, it has found takers because it’s a tried-and-tested formula, made mostly with newbies, where you go, watch the boy and the girl and come back happy when they walk into the sunshine together.

So, the makers of LoveYatri are not wrong in choosing this premise. What is wrong, though, is the fact that they have drawn so straight a line that it doesn’t get your heartbeat up. And if a love story fails to get you all excited, then it means something is not quite right.

The production values are all good. You can see that a liberal budget was at hand. The first half based in

Gujarat is done with a lot of love. The sights and sounds of Vadodara have been imaginatively captured. But more importantly, it’s the Garba that makes this the salient half. Shot on a big canvas, it makes the dance form so attractive that you could swing to the Dholida, Rangtaari and Chogada tracks, rhythmically swishing your dandiyas.

Debutant Aayush has definitely worked on his dance moves. He has a pleasing personality, but his act is one-dimensional. His co-actor, another newcomer, Warina, is someone to look out for. Her light-eyed, fair-skin, lithe form have definite appeal, as does her slightly nasal voice. She has the promise to become a future star because she handles the emotional scenes a tad better than Aayush, who needs to improve in the histrionics department.

However, the fault in LoveYatri lies with neither of the newcomers. It lies with the script that throws them together without infusing a combustible chemistry. While both are easy on the eye, they fail to ignite the screen.

In the second half, the film predictably moves to London. Here again, money seems of no consequence but lack of imagination stops the makers from capturing the English capital in entirety. Why? Was the jetlag so hard to get over?

In a bid to make the film squeaky clean, the so-called conflict sequence between the boy and the girl’s father is written and shot rather amateurishly. Please, guys, this is 2018. Why are we dishing out an ’80s scene? In fact, the funny scene is the one where Arbaaz Khan and Sohail Khan (Aayush’s brothers-in-law) show up as two

Gujarati cops who bail him out!

There was a lot more that could have been managed here. But debutant director Abhiraj K Minawala has played so safe that you almost feel this is a kiddie outing rather than a movie made for young adults.

Verdict: Of course, this can be an ideal Navratri date film. The Garba dances, as one said at the start, definitely get you swinging.