Jab We Met - Movie Review

Published: June 7, 2009

By JENNIFER HOPFINGER

Starring Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor

Outstanding performances and a splendid story make Jab We Met one of the best romantic comedies in years. Shahid Kapoor cements his role as the Heathcliff of Bollywood, playing yet another brooding romantic hero. This time, he’s the deeply depressed Aditya, the son of a wealthy Mumbai industrialist. And boy, is his life a mess! His mother’s extramarital affair caused a high-profile scandal, and now that his father is dead, she’s battling Aditya for control of the family company. To top it off, the woman he loves is marrying another. He attends her wedding before boarding a train from which he plans to jump to his death. But his suicide is inadvertently thwarted by a fellow passenger, the vivacious Geet (Kareena Kapoor).

Aditya finds her extremely annoying at first—and audiences will likely, too—but she snaps him out of his near-catatonia. When a series of mishaps brought on by Geet force them to travel together, her infectious joie de vivre starts to take hold of him and he finds himself falling for her, even though her heart belongs to another. Since he has nothing better to do—he was planning to be dead, after all—he delivers her safe and sound to her family home in the Punjab. Her parents are planning to marry her off to a man she doesn’t love, so she runs away in the middle of the night, and once again, she ropes Aditya into her plans and he escorts her to her boyfriend, Anshuman, who lives near the Himalayas. Aditya returns to Mumbai heartbroken, but he reconciles with his mother and throws himself into his work with renewed vigor. When Geet is rejected by Anshuman and her spirit is crushed, Aditya must do for her what she did for him—bring her back to life.

The two actors were romantically involved at the outset of shooting and broke up by the end of it. But whatever was going on behind the scenes, they’ve never been better matched than they were in this film (their previous onscreen pairings, including in 36 China Town and Chup Chup Ke, were much less successful). Their amusing interplay and magnetic attraction are a pleasure to watch, and their misadventures, particularly the ones involving her boisterous family, are quite funny.

This heartwarming tale about the meaning of life and the power of love can’t be missed.

Jab We Met is rated Must See.

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