Rocky Aur Rani ki Prem Kahaani
Director: Karan Johar
Actors: Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt
Rating: 3.5/5

This is the kind of film that takes some getting used to, before it kicks in. Speaking for myself, as an audience—who else will I speak for, here, anyway! It’s probably around the 20th minute on the movie’s timeline, that the switch happens. Primarily, because our picture palette has become so unaccustomed to straight-bat, super-urbane Bollywood opera, on the big screen, perhaps.

Starting with a full-on, giant, disco-ball item song, scores of goris preening in the background. An appropriate romantic song, shot before chiffon sarees, slipped in, for dream-like sequence, up in the mountains. That is, when the characters aren’t all playing to the gallery, with their oversized—Delhi, Punjabi, Bengali, intel (‘aatel’), jock-boy—clichés/cultural stereotypes, and coincidences.