No double lettering can save this vain, wimpy film

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There is really no reason for anyone to spend their good money and precious time on Kucch Luv Jaisaa. Of course, producer Vipul Shah and his wife Shifaali Shah have done their bit to ensure that the film works — she, by dropping several kilos before demanding a heroine’s role; and he, after taking a good look at his wife

and director-writer Barnali Ray Shulka’s creation, by summoning the family numerologist who added several As and Cs to the film’s title and wife’s name.
But no amount of double lettering is going to save this vain and wimpy film. It’s vain because it is constructed to show off Shifaali Shah’s recent weight loss and the urgent need, thereof, to play sexy; and it’s wimpy because the wife can’t have too much fun when the husband is paying.
As confused as I was annoyed? Oh, well, here’s what transpires: Madhu Saxena (Shifaali Shah) and Shravan Saxena (Sumeet Raghavan) are married and we meet them in their bed on February 29, 2000 (note the date — it’s Madhu’s birthday, as well as of the guy she is soon going to meet). Mr and Mrs Saxena are fully into each other — licking cake, making out, et cetera. Cut to several years and two children later — it is again Madhu’s birthday, but this time Shravan is too busy and forgets to wish her.
She is feeling dowdy, unappreciated and trying to focus on household chores when her husband telephones and calls her a lizard. Tears well up and just then she finds inspiration in her child’s artwork: “Today is the beginning of the rest of your life”. Mrs Saxena decides to transform herself and her life. She goes to a mall and gets a makeover — clingy wrap dress, heels, conditioned and curled hair — and then, with her husband’s credit card, gifts herself a red car.
Meanwhile, in another part of town, one Raghu Passport (Rahul Bose) is getting ready to celebrate his birthday with his girlfriend Ria (Neetu Chandra). He gathers his passports, shoves a gun in his backside, buys flowers and a cake and rushes over to her house. But before he can say, “It’s my birthday”, the cops she has been harbouring start firing at Raghu. He shoots back at them, sets his own car on fire and escapes.
Obviously, Raghu meets Mrs Saxena soon. She thinks he is a detective and offers to join him in his day’s assignment. She has angst about her advancing age and diminishing significance, and he needs a vehicle and a cover till he sorts out how to get out of Mumbai. So he says sure, and asks her to follow a man in a car.
And so they go, trailing this innocent man, to a guest house where they have some touch-and-go moments, share their fears and grouses and derive life-serving wisdom from the other before returning to their lives, overhauled and puffed up.
In between all this, we drop in often at Mr Saxena’s office where he and his idiotic colleagues discuss an ad campaign and what middle-class housewives want. If anyone in this world pays for the kind of work this group does, I suggest that it be made a criminal offence. Intermittently, Mr Saxena also tries to contact Mrs Saxena, but she says “wrong number”.

SOMEWHERE IN the layers of inanities and nonsense that Barnali Ray Shukla’s Kucch Luv Jaisaa is made of, lurks a half-decent movie. We see it in the beginning when husband and wife are together, and we see it again when Raghu and Madhu are interestingly close and doing some heavy breathing. Some wild, sweaty lovemaking could have redeemed this film, and with the weight loss the producer won’t even have had to hire a body-double. But, since the husband was paying, all we get is gyaan: “Love sex nahin hota, aur sex love nahin hota”. True, but who cares.
Kucch Luv Jaisaa focuses on an unhappy housewife and then sets out to fix her dull husband and life. But all it allows the missus is a protracted and annoying tantrum to force her husband to say, “Sweetheart, I still love you”.
Shifaali Shah behaves as if she is possessed by a slightly dim giggly girl. She really seems to believe that she didn’t just drop 10-15 kilos, but also the same number of years. If only. Rahul Bose has one-word dialogues, mostly, and is not bad.