Vinaithaandi Varuvaaya: Post-Script on Ek Deewana Tha (Hindi; 2012)

My piece on the Tamil original HERE.

I saw Ek Deewana Tha on Saturday evening: the film is quite undone by the cast. It hews close to the Telugu version (I prefer the Tamil one myself, at least as far as the ending is concerned, but also because of Trisha), but because both Prateik and Amy Jackson are mis-cast, one never feels the passion. Prateik really seems like he’s stolen someone else’s part, and the less said about Amy Jackson the better; not suggesting that Keralites have to look a certain way, but Jackson is so obviously not Indian, so manifestly a firang, it’s almost comical.

The music sounded weirdly flat to me even in the trailers, and the film proved no different — it’s essentially the same music as in the Tamil version, but somehow the sound of the words just seems banal here (contrast the lyrics of “Mannipaaya” with the ways those sound in “Sharminda”); and some of the lame videos were just as lame here as in the Tamil version (although Prateik’s gym-toned body was especially jarring and out-of-sync with the movie in a few of the song sequences). The Hindi version of Aaromale is better than the others, but is nevertheless very far from the viscerality of the Tamil version.