One By Two

Rating : 3/10
Release Date : 31st January, 2014
Time : 139 minutes
Director, Writer : Devika Bhagat; Music : Shankar Ehsaan Loy
Starring : Abhay Deol, Preeti Desai, Rati Agnihotri, Lillete Dubey, Jayant Kriplani, Darshan Jariwala, Anish Trivedi, Geetika Tyagi, Preetika Chawla, Tahir Bhasin, Netrapal He-Ra Singh, Yashika Dhillon



A movie about two confused characters falls completely flat on its face as the most confused person turns out to be the story writer. The stop-start pace of the film doesn’t help either as we follow our lead pair, who, instead of being thankful for what they do have, choose to be miserable, and sulk / frown for the ultra-long duration of the film. There are a few moments which resonate, but are too far and few in between to salvage the movie.

Abhay Deol is in an IT firm, well thought of by his boss, has two good friends as colleagues (Preetika, Tahir), a doting Mama (Darshan Jariwala) and loving parents (Rati, Jayant), so everything should be hunky dory, right ? Nope ! He has just been dumped by his long time girlfriend (Geetika) and he spends the first half moaning about it, trying to get her back. His highly intrusive mother also wants him to get married and finds a cute girl (Yashika) for him to meet. And he picks up the guitar and begins to strum after ages.

Preeti has been brought up in England, has studied dance in New York and pursues the same as a career, while living with her mother, Lillete, in a plush apartment in Mumbai. Again, lots to be happy for, but a succession of fruitless one night stands, her mom’s alcoholism, the rigged voting of the dance competition she enters and her abortive attempts to bring her rich, industrialist father (Anish) back into her life give her cause to be unhappy.

The music is good, probably the best thing about the film. And some of the dance sequences are imaginative, executed well. A few stray remarks – a comment by Abhay’s boss about 25 years, one by Preeti about her thong adjustment, one by Abhay’s colleagues towards the end at his arranged marriage meeting and the whole cops kavi sammelan with its rich poetry inspire some smiles but otherwise the writing and the characters are too weak, too confused to sustain the film. The idea behind the film is interesting but its just too painful to watch, with the characters doing things you just don’t understand, especially in a very stretched second half…