The 'After Hrs' review: 'London, Paris, New York'

Film: London, Paris, New York
Director: Anu Menon
Cast: Ali Zafar, Aditi Rao Hydari
Rating: **

The film starts off with a debutant filmmaker Nikhil Chopra (Ali) being interviewed in New York and thereafter it’s all flashback leading up to that day. Several years back, Nikhil and Lalitha (Aditi) bump into each other at London airport. You know what they say about opposites attract, so these two radically different people, strike an instant friendship. Soaking in the London rain, they spend an entire day together, before Lalitha flies off to New York.

But while the two prefer to ditch taking shade when it rains, the writer only seems to seek the shade of an umbrella called ‘convenience’ thereafter. Call it lack of imagination, or simply the way they imagined it, but by then the predictable story is only piggybacking on the performances of the two actors. It’s a coming-of-age love story alright, and has loads of sweet delightful moments, but it’s the inability to sustain those few sweet moments for long that keeps this film from becoming what it really could have been — better! Aditi tries hard to exude charm, innocence and then tries to be her sexy best as she does a U-turn as the heartbroken gal in Paris, but is over-the-top in places and fails to raise her performance to the ‘Wow’ factor at any point. Ali seems to have gotten all the good dialogues and he is more impressive than his leading lady for sure. He is convincingly bubble-gum cool initially, but it’s the confrontational scene with Aditi, minutes before the climax, that he delivers his best and you find yourself wishing for more of that caliber of performance. The film could well be set in Timbaktu really, but the filmmaker’s focus seemed to be more on the designer shoes and fashionable bags, reflecting the style sense of the three cities. The backdrop music is peppy and the camera-work impressive. But overall, the film fails to hit home and all you are left with are the visuals of the three cities — London, Paris, New York. This one’s for sure a cheaper way to check out the three places. Overall, it’s strictly a watch for those few light-hearted moments in between all the city-hopping.