A fearless actor, Aditya falters in the higher notes.īut then as I said, the singing here is not quite what we heard Lata Mamgeshkar, Mohammad Rafi and Kishore Kumar do in 'Abhimaan'. This young actor is not afraid to look compromised on screen. Like all the heroes of Mahesh Bhatt's cinema, Aditya has to portray a man who frequently creates a scene and embarrases the person he loves the most. In pursuit of pleasure derived from the bottle his character becomes a cross between Shah Rukh Khan's Devdas, Ranbir Kapoor's Rockstar and Kris Kirstofferson's John Norman Howard. In Aditya's persona, Rahul becomes a metaphor for all the success in showbiz that goes awry. This petite beauty with eyes that never stay silent gives to her part so much heart, you want to just embrace her and protect her from her self-destructive mentor-turned-tormentor.Īditya Roy Kapoor as a rock star who is rapidly slipping from the charts gives all of himself to the character. Just to see Shradha Kapoor's eyes melt in mutating emotions of unflinching devotion to her alcoholic star-on-the-skids lover is a vision that makes us believe true love still exists.

The premise for the plot presumes love to be selfless all-giving and unconditional. It's a curious tradeoff and one carried off in this film with an exuberance of emotions. For their love to be liberated from the rituals of competitiveness, one of the lovers must make a huge sacrifice before the end.įor love to live the lover must die. In 'Aashiqui 2' the two protagonists are pretty much left to their own devices to create that unbearable frisson between two people whose love is trapped in the whirligig of showbiz. It was easy for Hrishida to portray Jaya Bhaduri as a better artiste than Amitabh Bachchan quite simply because she sang in Lata Mangeshkar's voices.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee made his melodious 'Abhimaan' on the same theme. In spirit and in the way the two principal actors perform their parts of two soul-mates and singers torn asunder by their allegiance to the same competitive spirit of showmanship, 'Aashiqui 2' is robustly reminiscent of the Kris Kristofferson-Barbra Streisand film where he discovers a co-singer who steals his heart and also his career.

Aashiqui 2 a star is born