Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui Review: Despite all the woke noises that it seeks to make, it eventually does not budge an inch from its received wisdom about what constitutes masculinity.
Ayushmann Khurrana is now a certified past master at playing imperfect, self-doubting men trying to surmount with physiological and psychological hurdles, of his own making and otherwise. In Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, he tilts at one more such character who must contend with a disorienting personal crisis and find a way out of a corner.
Directed by Abhishek Kapoor, Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui extends Ayushmann Khurrana’s experiments with subjects that are usually swept under the carpet in this country. But this film is more in the Badhai Ho zone, where Khurrana is in a reactive mode, than in the Shubh Mangal Savdhaan zone, where his onscreen character navigates a personal dysfunction and the challenges it poses.
Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui sees him in the guise of a ponytailed, 30-year-old gym owner and bodybuilder, a government school-educated, sanitary ware businessman’s son who aspires in vain to be the city’s strongest man to live down the bullying that he faced after losing his mother at the age of 13.
The gym isn’t in the pink of health until a svelte Zumba instructor walks through its portals and pulls off a dramatic turnaround. That, however, isn’t the only reason why the pretty woman soon has the hero eating out of her hands.
Lust kicks in well before love does and the sluice-gates of passion are well and truly thrown open. And then, reality strikes. The man learns that the woman isn’t what he thinks she is. She has been through something that he can barely comprehend, let alone properly process. Shock, anger and confusion assail the guy.
On a strictly superficial level, Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is bright, breezy, boisterous and easy to sail through. Sadly, it lets contradictory signals and problematic messaging undermine its positive intent. The film would us believe that it is batting for inclusivity and diversity but it cannot help ending without celebratory posturing over the crowning of “Chandigarh ka sabse bhaari bharkam mard”.
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