'Luv U Alia': Alia Bhatt should sue its makers (Movie Review)

By Subhash K. Jha

Film: “Luv U Alia”; Director: Indrajit Lankesh; Cast: Ravichandran, Bhumika Chawla, Chandan Kumar and Sangeetha Chauhan; Rating: *
Released originally in Kannada in 2015 — and you just have to see how original this concoction of gaudy construction is — “Luv U Alia” now comes in a Hindi version to prove what film lovers already know. Bad commercial films in any language are equally bad.
There are no redeeming qualities in this banal, cheerless, sloppy, clumsy and distinctly dumb rom-com about a shifty marriage counselor Kiran (Chandan Kumar) who gets the hots for a girl named Alia (Sangeetha Chauhan) only to realise that her father Ravi (V. Ravichandran) whom Kiran suspects of being a slimeball with a stethoscope, is actually an angel in a doctor’s coat.
Whoever thought this spindly rom-com would actually work needs to be honoured for optimism.
The second half of the abominably sickening, over-sweetened and corny confection has Kiran winning over his future father-in-law by pretending to be a nurse, a female nurse, let me hasten to clarify. Ha ha. What follows is clunky comments on broken marriages conducted by a director who has serious problems escaping the multi-coloured toys of his childhood that seem to have chased his filmmaking aspirations into adulthood.
The film looks like a cross between a 8-year old child’s drawing-book image of a lavish lifestyle and a 20-something year old’s most outlandish porn fantasy.
One of the film’s highpoints is the hero in drag pretending to seduce his girlfriend’s father. If this strikes you as distastefully incestuous, then be warned. Good taste is not a strong quality in this colourful romp.
The sets and locations are as garish as Lego buildings constructed by a child who favours red green and purples.
If “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” fell on its head and suffered serious injuries, this film could be the end-result. The performances are beyond atrocious. Everyone has the licence to act goofily without fear of repercussions.
In the second-half, the long-missing Bhumika Chawla who once tolerated Salman Khan’s weird hairstyle in “Tere Naam”, shows up to tolerate the hero’s weird….everything!
This is no country for the discerning. Stay away.