Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage   Producer: Rohit Kumar Director: Vikram Bhatt Starring: Hrithik Roshan, Amisha Patel, Kiran Kumar, Gulshan Grover, Preeti Sapru and Mukesh Tiwari Music: Rajesh Roshan Lyrics: Ibraham Ashq and Dev Kohli Genre: Romantic Recommended Audience: General Approximate Running Time: 3 Hrs Film Released on: 19 April 2002 Reviewed by: Ashley Gujadhur  - Rating: 2.0 / 10   Let us know what you think about this review

The first and general rule for any director wishing to make it big should be that if you intend to make a film, do it well. Second should be that if you plan on taking inspiration from another film, make sure the film is worthy of the inspiration. Sadly, Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage succeeds in getting both rules wrong. Vikram Bhatt has surely missed the bus this time!

After watching the film with, one never figures out what Vikram Bhatt was running for, much less why he was making this flick. The film has a content similar to Amisha Patel’s previous two films and Hrithik Roshan’s Yaadein, which has no content at all. It fails to live up to the billing and falls flat on its surface, which makes it a namby-pamby film. The movie is a complete washout, the main reason being a two-decade-old story and the lack of a coherent and innovative script.

Probably the sole positive aspect movie is that the chemistry previously shared by Amisha and Hrithik in Kaho Na Pyaar Hai are still vibrant. But that is not enough to save this movie. Apart from this, searching for other positive outcomes is like looking for a needle in a haystack. If not for the starcast, this film could have been passed for a B-C grade product. The movie is pathetic to say the least and from someone as capable as Vikram Bhatt, this makes it even worse. The story is simply a rehash of many previous films, one example being Kaho Na Pyaar Hai. Boy saves girl’s life and falls for her at first sight. But girl has a security tighter than the Prime Minister of any country has, so much so she can’t even go to school. The person behind all this is her father who is none other than the don of the mafia. Boy and girl use the Navratri season as a pretext to talk to each other, wasting both their time and the audience’s. However, father announces that girl is to get married to someone else and obviously boy can’t accept this. The simplest and most predictable route is to make girl flee from her house and bring her to his hostel. What follows next is how they both tackle the issue when girl’s father comes to know that his daughter is a boy’s hostel.

The film fails on so many yardsticks mainly in the story and screenwriting department. First, the story has been conceived in such a way that it leaves you with a sense of déjà vu and as a result fails to strike any chord with the viewer. Secondly, the screenplay has been written in a poorly different way as it depends on inconsistent and illogical events. It is hard to swallow that someone isn’t at all exposed to the real world particularly in this modern environment where even small children are kept up to date.

Hrithik Roshan does nothing else apart from crying and thinking of Amisha. The film is blessed with many a stupid scenes. The cherry of the cake being, the night during the festivals where the two lovers go for a ride, watch Lagaan at the theatre, sing the title song during the daytime, confess their love to each other and still, boy manages to drop her home without her parents noticing her absence. Or perhaps Hrithik in his Terminator-like climax with him delivering punches just like a computer-generated machine tops it all. This is not real action, it is stupid action.

Another big flaw of the movie is that one fails to relate to the characters on screen. Normally romances do that to viewer’s but this one doesn’t. Whereas in Raaz one can feel the terror in Sanjana, this film has nothing to make the viewer feel sad or down when the protagonists are going through bad moments. The main reason for this is that the characters are poorly developed and the scenes are so predictable that they fail to surprise the viewer.

For instance, when Kiran Kumar is asking for forgiveness at Hrithik’s hostel, it is clear to everyone that it’s only a play from his side even before the truth is revealed. Boy, how many times have we seen this? Probably, if Amisha was really tortured by her parents, one could have felt some pity for her.

Vikram Bhatt needs to do some rethinking about his direction after this film. The scenes drag most of the time and have nothing to keep the viewer engrossed. The film teeters between being an action film and a romantic film and fails to do justice to both genres. There is no one scene where good direction is apparent.

The only portion where he deserves some type of applause is in the never witnessed before comedy track in the movie. What’s so funny about it? It’s not the intended comedy sequences that bring out the laughs! Unique, because the audience laughs when the actors are in pain. Watching Amisha crying and pleading her father, one can only burst out laughing because of the unrealism of the scene and non-existent direction.

Music by Rajesh Roshan is more appealing watching the film. He owes this to the wonderful choreography provided by Raju Khan, Ganesh Acharya and Ganesh Hedge. The numbers, which stand out, are the title song and “Hawaon Ne Yeh Kaha”. It’s a good thing that the soundtrack of the film isn’t earth shattering as it would have been sad to see a good soundtrack wasted in such a film.

Hrithik impresses with his dance moves yet again. He manages to wow us with his steps in “Hawaon Ne Kya Kaha”, with the help of the choreography from Ganesh Acharya. It’s sad however, the he fails to make the mark in the area of most importance- acting. This is because we’ve seen better from him. The scenes offered to him are typical, which could have been enacted by most actors in the industry. Unlike, Mission Kashmir and K3G where he had plenty scenes to exhibit his talent, there are none here. It is high time he takes a closer look at his scripts before he lands himself in trouble. And yeah, buddy it’s not good to see guys crying over and over again.

Amisha has a bag full of energy. After all, someone must need a lot of energy to cry so much on screen. She delivers an above average performance and manages to emote well although she gets annoying very often. Her facial expressions are really good as well as her climax scene. Her most wonderful achievement should be that she has managed to match Hrithik step for step in the dancing department. The movie does contain some good camerawork from Pravin Bhatt, especially at the beginning of the title song where the camera flies over the bridge but then, who cares when the film itself is so bad? Background music is loud and ineffective. The least said about editing is better because if it were for me, I would have deleted the whole film. Sets are colourful, especially during the Navratri portions. Dialogues from Girish Dhamija are very average. One of the limited pluses of the movie is the action sequences provided by Abbas Ali. The man really has talent and you feel that the punches delivered by Hrithik can get no better than this.

Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage is one of the worst, if not the worst movie to have hit the big screen this year. As whether to watch the movie or not, I’ll suggest everyone to go by Hrithik’s dialogue in the film “Aaj nahi, kal nahi, kabhi nahi”.