MIRZA JUULIET - One of those strictly avoidable films that make you wonder why they got made and for whom? (Review By Bobby Sing)

You got to be exceptionally brilliant having a few appreciable love songs in the package, if you are once again presenting the same old formulaic love story of Romeo-Juliet mixed with the climax of Punjab’s folk tale Mirza-Sahiba, calling it MIRZA JUULIET. Plus you desperately need to have some USP in the film too lifting it above the routine ‘seen before’ kind of love story bringing the required freshness. (Spoilers Ahead) Sadly director Rajesh Ram Singh isn’t able to provide anything mentioned above in his below average MIRZA JUULIET which simply falls flat in terms of novelty and even the lead pair looks pretty aged in their close ups and some scenes lacking the mass appeal. Wasting a powerful potential twist the film could have been much better focusing on the sub-plot of rape before marriage and its decisive political outcome creating a scary chaos. But the makers strangely keep sticking to the clichéd outdated pattern and deliver a film standing nowhere in the category of young romantic musicals.   Vaguely talking about the Hindu-Muslim clashes, harassment of women within the family, scary political ambitions of goons and corrupted Police department in the interiors, MIRZA JUULIET takes it clear clues from films such as ISHAQZAADEY, TANU WEDS MANU, GANGS OF WASSEYPUR and more, but still remains unable to impress neither through its lead pair or their passionate love story treated quite awfully. In fact the only novelty in the film is its lead female protagonist, who is not shy of verbally discussing or practicing sex with her lover making a bold statement and then informs about the same to her influential fiancé too when she is high on booze. The first half strangely keeps focusing on the same with a silly horny character and the second half simply becomes the typical runaway saga as usual. Moreover the climax yet again comes up with a similar conclusion we last saw in MIRZYA making no impact whatsoever on the already exhausted audience. However in a 130 minutes long terribly stretched love story, we do have a shockingly disturbing scene as a dialogue between an elder brother and his sister, post her sudden pre-marriage rape by the would-be husband. Unfortunately the director and his writer could not present it in any highly impressive manner, which could have been a major twist and the much desired USP of the script resulting in a lot better film. Playing the Juuliet, Pia Bajpai tries her best overdoing the act of Parineeti Chopra as seen in ISHAQZQAADE and Darshan Kumar as Mirza never appears to be the hero of a young love story despite of being pretty decent. As a result you neither feel any chemistry nor any emotional connect with the lead pair affecting the overall impact. In the supporting role, Chandan Roy Sanyal plays a clown like villain confusingly portrayed by the writers and Priyanshu Chatterjee keeps trying to enact a role of a local don, not actually suiting his persona to be very honest. In the technical department the cinematography gives you a deja-vu kind of feel reminding you of films set in the similar local regions and the soundtrack doesn’t have anything worth mentioning to support the on screen romance. In all, revolving around a tragedy, the film is a tragedy itself, which certainly forces you to think that why such lifelessly repetitive movies get made and for what kind of target audience? Rating : 1+1 / 5 (with the additional 1 for the fresh sub-plot of a pre-marriage rape criminally wasted by the makers.)