'A Strange Love Story'

Film: A Strange Love Story
Director: Tarique and Sahil Seth
Cast: Eddie Singh, Riya Sen, Raj Zutshi, Ashutosh Rana
Rating: *

A Strange Love Story’s title does not do the film justice. Here’s why.

There’s a photographer Kabir (Seth, badly in need of an orthodontist) who holds the camera like it’s a bomb about to explode, his creepy friend Billy (Zutshi, badly in need of a hair-stylist) and a random skimpily-dressed girl (Sen).

So Kabir (mind you, his name must be pronounced with an accent) decides to go to a dargah late at night against all warnings and picks little miss skimpy as a tour guide. “My name is Jennifer but my friends call me Jia,” she tells him, droopy-eyed. “Cute,” says our hero. And we yawn.

We do not know why the idea of video-taping the dargah at midnight excites Kabir. But he leaves Jia alone in there and she gets whacked and faints. Next, she wakes up in the boy’s bedroom and senses a paranormal presence. Off she runs to a father at a church seeking help. “Tumhe aisa nahi karna chahiye tha,” says the father and tells her to leave Goa. 

Jia shacks up with Kabir’s assistant who promptly jhaads a lecture about how smoking is ‘Haanikarak’. The point of this scene is to establish how Jia is a troubled girl. Her clothes were doing the job just fine, you know!

If you could win an award for head-banging abilities, it will go to Zutshi’s who shakes his head at his birthday party, creepily eyeing girls.

Anyway to cut a long story short, creepy Billy gets murdered while he’s trying to canoodle a drugged Jia. The police arrest a bunch of yuppies including our hero, the heroine and his assistant.

Enter Iqbal (Rana) who resorts to shuddh Hindi even though one would expect Urdu from him. Various mysterious (read: stupid) events follow and we are made to understand that a Jinnaat or evil spirit is in love with Jia and is going around killing anybody who lusts after her. Dude, how about putting some clothes on her? You know, prevention is better than cure and all that?

The film’s writers probably thought that the audiences are a bunch of idiots. Pointless scenes and conversations are thrown in. An example? Jia screams upon seeing a cockroach and gets chided by Kabir. Sheetal jumps in with “Aisee daravni cheeze bahout ho rahee hain Jia ke saath. Hume tantrik baba se milna chahiye!”

And of course in addition to all the ‘elements’ that are supposed to add masala to this pointless humdrum is a random song to showcase Eddie’s dancing and romancing skills. And it surpasses the retardation standard set by Mimoh’s break-dance in Haunted.

A Strange Love Story takes ‘strange’ to whole new level. Give this one a miss. And if you must watch it, wait for it to get tax-free for the national integration theme it promotes through fathers, tantriks and peerbabas!