Director: Abhishek Verman
Cast: Arjun Kapoor, Alia bhat, Amrita Singh, Ronit Roy, Revathi
RunTime: 150 minutes
Adapted from Chetan Bhagat’s novel with the same name and directed by First-timer Abhishek Verman , 2 States manages to keep you entertained for the whole time, even with numerous small glitches in the story adaptation on the big screen. But if you are willing to kick away the stereotyping and a little out-of-place logic, then it sure is refreshingly entertaining.
The masaledar love story with peppy songs for company, amazing cinematography and the chemistry between the lead pair of Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt makes it worth the watch.
The idea of the story revolves around the typical Indian setting on how two youngsters who fall in love and then try to convince their parents for their marriage. The problem is, our boy is Punjabi while the girl is Tamilian. This “convincing-the-parents” part goes through a whole lot of cultural differences melodrama, which is fun to watch.
The lead pair has a good chemistry brewing between them. Although Arjun is the one who narrates the story and is kind of his-version, Alia sure steals the show. Not just for the ease with which she manages to change in each of the frames but how effortlessly she makes herself look convincing as a Tamilian without any fuss. Arjun isn’t bad either, but Alia scores over him.
The music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy suits the refreshing young feel of the movie and even the background score makes many of the scenes click. Cinematography takes the whole movie a notch higher, especially the way the weddings have been shot. Casting has been done beautifully. While Amrita Rao (Arjun’s mother) becomes the typical Punjabi maa throwing about tantrums and emotional blackmailing then and now, Ronit Roy (Arjun’s Dad) brings in the drunk-dad-with-issues back on screen after his much memorable performance in Udaan. Alia’s parents (Mom played by Revathi and Dad played by Shiv Kumar Subramaniam) have little to do in the movie comparatively but they do justice to whatever they are part of.
The biggest problem with the movie might be to bring in everything from the book. It is good if a reader watches it, who might understand most of the details, but for a non-reader certain scenes might never make sense. Same happens with 2 states, like the absence of a big conflict which might break their relationship or why his mother is so obnoxiously loud or his dad’s back-story seemed to have been squeezed in.
Nevertheless, if you just through all these above thoughts out, you would surely end up enjoying the 150-odd minutes of the movie, filled with some good laughs (stereotypical maybe) and if you get the connection right, you’ll love it too.
I’m going with a 3/5 for 2 states. Maybe it’s more fun to watch if you’ve read the book.