For all its preoccupation with blindness, the only people Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan deems blind is the audience to think they cannot see what poppycock unfolds, sighs Sukanya Verma.
Strangers meeting on a train and falling in love has led to epic romances from Pakeezah to Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Never though the experience has felt as bogus and bizarre as Saba and Jahaan's blind encounter in Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan.
Directed by Santosh Singh for a script 'created' by Mansi Bagla, the farfetched premise inspired by Ruskin Bond's short story The Eyes Have It, revolves around Saba (Shanaya Kapoor), a blindfolded theatre actress eyeing Bollywood stardom and Jahaan (Vikrant Massey), a sightless songwriter traveling from Delhi to Dehradun on a train with a VFX view.
Whatever poetic allusions the makers want to build on what it means to see or feel through the eyes of one's soul are lost in the sheer senselessness of the plot.
The extraordinary absence of distrust and personal safety is mind boggling as instant overfamiliarity makes way for giddy love between two people who've just met and know nothing about each other.
Solo traveling for young women in India is tough as it is, let alone with a strap tied around the eyes for the sake of a blind girl's role while cozying up to a smooth-talking stranger. Even Jahaan cannot help asking, 'Andhe ladke chichore nahi ho sakte?'
The duo grow creepily close when Jahaan offers to give her a crash course in blindness.
Vishal Mishra's lilting love ballads accompanying their coming together is the only bright spot.
Honestly though, this is just too much convoluted attraction to take in unless it's a kinky sort of movie, which Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan is certainly not.
The let's-just-get-it-done-and-over-with screaming in every single lip lock the leads share says volumes about their chemistry.
Sporting a haggard and scruffy look, Vikrant Massey's flair for sounding sardonic sees Jahaan's sincerity for the joke it is.
Newcomer Shanaya Kapoor looks chic and speaks well but is far too vanilla to pull off the cinnamon flavours of a logic-defying love fool.
Post-interval, its pile of contrivances shifts from Indian hill stations to European winter as identities are changed and romantic interests are renewed for the sake of prolonged nonsense, which includes a wannabe experimental, loony heart-to-heart between a stoned couple.
What can I say? Just turn a blind eye to it?
For all its preoccupation with blindness, the only people Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan deems blind is the audience to think they cannot see what poppycock unfolds.
