LOVE GAMES

T-Series and Vishesh Films’ Love Games (A) is a love story with a difference. Ramona Narang’s (Patralekha) husband dies after falling from his house on a top floor. It is not clear whether the death is a murder, suicide or accident. Soon, it is revealed that Ramona is having an affair with Sam Saxena (Gaurav Arora) who himself is under psychiatric treatment.

One day, Ramona and Sam enter into a pact to play love games. They attend high-end parties and target the most in-love couples. While Ramona tries to seduce the man and sleep with him, Sam targets the lady and tries to get in bed with her. Whoever succeeds in getting physical with the new partner is the winner.

At one such party, Ramona and Sam target Gaurav Asthana (Hiten Tejwani), a well-known and influential criminal lawyer, and his doctor-wife, Alisha Asthana (Tara Alisha Berry). Although Ramona succeeds in taking Gaurav to bed before Sam can sleep with Alisha, Sam and Alisha fall in love with one another. Alisha, whose husband abuses her physically and mentally, finds solace in Sam’s company. Ramona resents Sam’s closeness to Alisha as she is over-possessive about him. She spills the beans about his wife’s extra-marital affair with Sam, to Gaurav. Ramona also threatens Sam and asks him not to get too close to Alisha.

Feeling suffocated in his relationship with Ramona, Sam wants to break free and settle down with Alisha. So he reveals all to Alisha – that he had got involved with her (Alisha) while playing a love game but was now truly in love with her. Feeling betrayed by both, the abusive Gaurav as well as Sam, Alisha wants to kill them. She approaches Ramona with evidence which proves that Ramona had murdered her husband and uses this to blackmail her. She asks Ramona to murder Gaurav while offering to kill Sam herself. She also asks Ramona to take up the challenge, stating that the one caught by the police would end up in jail while the one not caught would go scot-free.

Ramona successfully carries out Gaurav’s murder. But instead of Alisha killing Sam, the reverse happens – Sam kills Alisha.

What happens thereafter? Do Sam and Ramona live happily ever after? Or is there more than meets the eye in the murders of Gaurav and Alisha?

Vikram Bhatt has penned a story which seems difficult to digest because not only do the characters decide what they will do but also seem to know the consequences as if they make the law. Even otherwise, it seems strange that Ramona and Sam should target only the most in-love couple. Their quest for sex could’ve been satiated even if they had targeted couples who aren’t most in love. Actually, one couple which they target is Gaurav and Alisha, who are not even in love, leave alone most in love. If this is just a minor aberration, there are other flaws in the screenplay. For instance, Alisha tells Sam about how she is being tortured by her husband and she gives him the reasons why she can’t divorce him (he is very powerful, influential etc.). But the audience realises that those are the very reasons for which she should not be staying with him. A family court, after all, is open to even the weakest person for seeking divorce. And frankly, Alisha is not even a weakling – she is educated and a successful surgeon. Again, Alisha asks Ramona to kill her husband, Gaurav, while agreeing to herself kill Sam. Why Ramona so happily accepts to be part of this cross-murder plan is not clear because Alisha even tells her that the one caught by the police would have to rot in jail. In the love games Ramona and Sam were playing, they didn’t have to risk their lives but this murder game could cost Ramona her life! Why would a selfish and self-centred person like Ramona get into such a dangerous game so easily? Also, the police are shown to be idiots for not realising what Alisha realises when she gets the video footage of Ramona’s housing society. It is also not clear why Alisha falls in love with Sam after knowing that he inflicts harm on himself by cutting himself with blades. She doesn’t even think that her relationship with Sam could be as traumatic as with Gaurav.

It is weak links like the above which make the screenplay dull, boring and silly. Even otherwise, the whole concept of Ramona and Sam playing love games will be understood by a thin section of the audience only. The large mass base of audience and those residing in smaller centres or frequenting single-screen cinemas will either not understand the concept or not appreciate it. Vikram Bhatt’s dialogues are ordinary and abound in four-letter words in English but the excessive use of the f-word won’t really titillate the viewers. Likewise, there are a lot of lip-locking scenes but even they fail to excite the viewers.

Patralekha fails to impress in a role in which she seems to be miscast. As Ramona Narang, she is unable to deliver and ends up screaming and screeching. Tara Alisha Berry is sincere and earnest in the role of Alisha Asthana. Gaurav Arora is no hero material. As Sam Saxena, he does an ordinary job. Hiten Tejwani is average in the role of Gaurav Asthana. He looks awkward in the lip-locking scene. Rukhsar Rehman provides ordinary support. Dinesh Chaturvedi, Vishnu Sharma, Rinki Singhvi, Anant Kumar, Umar Sharif, Alisha Farrer, B.K. Tiwari, Paras Thukral, Ajay Kumar Singh, Soni Jha, Bhushan and Ajay Sharma do as desired.

Vikram Bhatt’s direction is hardly better than his dull script. He is unable to narrate the far-fetched script in an interesting manner. Although a couple of songs (music by Sangeet-Siddharth Haldipur) are well-tuned, they are not popular. The other songs are dull. Lyrics (by Kausar Munir; English lyrics by Vikram Bhatt) are ordinary. Sangeet-Siddharth Haldipur’s background music passes muster. Manoj Soni’s cinematography is fair. Swapnali Das’ production designing is alright. Anthony Stone’s action scenes are okay. Kuldeep Mehan’s editing could’ve been better.

On the whole, Love Games is a weak fare and will flop at the box-office.