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Pyaar Ka Punchnama-2 (Hindi)

Director: Luv Ranjan

Cast: Kartik Aryan, Omkar Kapoor, Sunny Singh, Nushrat Bharucha, Sonia Sehgal, Ishita Raj

Four years ago, when

Pyaar Ka Punchnama hit the screens, it was a novel attempt to look at boys’ point of view on love and romance in these materialistic times. When moral balance tilts in favour of bank balance. Throwing notions like sacrifice and yearning out of the window, it presented mush as a manipulation that girls plot to strangle their boyfriends with a leash. The film did moderate business at the box office. Spurred on by the response, Luv is back to repeat himself with a film that follows the male gaze all over again with a bigger budget, better production design but, more importantly, a script that doesn’t bore. It is indeed one-sided and is loaded against 50 per cent of the population but that is the whole idea and Luv manages to play the game fairly well.

Trying to do a pop psychoanalysis of a female mind in a fun way, the film is once again a tale of three friends Gogo, Thakur and Sunny who are desperate to fall in love.

They find three well-manicured forms in Ruchika, Supriya and Kusum. Ruchika wants unflinching attention of Gogo, Supriya turns Sunny into a domestic servant and Kusum uses Thakur as a credit card.

The pace is breezy and dialogues don’t lose their gender insensitivity through the course of the film.

ANUJ KUMAR