A beautiful couple meet on a cruise liner, fall in love and sing a couple of songs before disaster strikes. Is this the Bollywood version of ‘Titanic’?

Opening with love quotes from diverse sources like Albert Einstein, Emily Dickson, Leo Tolstoy and David Levesque, we meet Ajay (Ajay Devgan) a senior citizen. He narrates the story of Ajay (Devgan, again) and Piya (Kajol), two twenty-somethings who meet aboard the ‘Super Star Libra’, a cruise ship which is travelling from an unspecified location to Mumbai.

“Let’s party and get tight, cause its love at first sight!” the younger Ajay declares. By the time the journey ends, they are predictably in love. In true romcom fashion, a misunderstanding ensues but they are reconciled and get married.

Post-intermission, there is a dramatic and melodramatic change of gear: Piya is struck not by an iceberg but by Alzheimer’s disease. The rest of the film focuses on how the progressive mental deterioration of Pia’s mind affects the couple’s relationship, ‘Away From Her’-style.

“I think your story is going to be too long,” the elder Piya remarks when her husband decides to narrate their earlier days of clichéd happiness. She is right: nothing substantial happens plot-wise in the first hour and a half which is swamped with juvenile jokes. This is presumably to establish the joie de vivre of the characters lives. Instead it threatens to sink the proceedings and may have the effect of alienating even the most patient viewer.

A-list leading man Ajay Devgan’s direction results in an uneven and clumsy film of two halves. His resort to numerous flashbacks and frequent split screen montages are unnecessary and tiresome. The obligatory salsa inspired songs, inexplicably subtitled in Hindi, are symptomatic of the condition the film addresses: they are forgettable.

It all comes together in the final emotional twenty minutes. This is largely due to the performances of Devgan and his real life wife Kajol who inject much needed dignity into this maudlin tale. It ends on an uplifting note: true lovers never really forget each other.

Like Aamir Khan’s earlier ‘Taare Zameen Par’ which examined the plight of a dyslexic kid, this is another worthy attempt by mainstream Bollywood to highlight a little known medical condition which affects many Indians. This is especially welcome since premature senility is often misunderstood and can be considered a taboo topic in India.

Director: Ajay Devgan, 165 mins, 12A, Subtitles

Stars: Ajay Devgan, Kajol, Divya Dutta, Karan Khanna.

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