I Love NY review: Kangana Ranaut doesn’t disappoint, again

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There were reports that Kangana Ranaut didn’t want I Love NY (New Year) to be released, but now after watching the film, it seems her worries were mostly fictional. In fact, she is the one you’ll notice the most in the film, and she doesn’t disappoint either. I Love NY is much better than its run-of-the-mill trailers, but how good is actually good enough? Let’s find out.

The film starts with a commentary in Randhir Singh’s (Sunny Deol) voice which is basically an exercise to make the ‘desi’ audience familiar with the popular American outlook. It’s just that the film has been released after being canned for some years and thus the Indian viewers have become used to such cultural and behavioural differences via other Hindi films.

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Anyway, we get to know that our guy Randhir is a hard working, coffee drinking guy whose last marriage proposal was dated 10 years ago, and now he is gathering courage to pop-up the same question to his current girlfriend Riya (Tannishtha).

The really long gap between the two proposals is necessary otherwise how will the filmmakers justify a 57-year-old hero to the Indian audience? Of course, pun intended. He chooses the New Year Eve to get the long pending work done, but a series of mistakes and coincidences brings him to New York (you get the NY drift?), where he meets a school teacher Tikku Verma (Kangana Ranaut), described as the president of unlucky club by her boyfriend Ishaan (Navin Chowdhary). This ‘chance’ encounter is the actual beginning of a story which can at least boast of sensible dialogues.

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A basic initiation is needed before we delve deeper into the nitty-gritties of a ‘why did you happen to me’ sort of tale in New York. In case, you don’t have any direct reference to American pop culture then you can also consider Friends as a source of information. There things like handing over the keys of your apartment to somebody you’re dating is considered as the penultimate step towards getting married. In a nutshell, New York is a city which is a great mixture of traditional and modern. In such a city, Ishaan finds a ‘gharelu ladki’ who he accuses of being the ‘titli’ type.

A girl who wants to be happy even at the darkest point of her life is at the helm of affairs, but her back-story has been presented in a very ordinary way. Tikku’s Monica-like apartment may hint towards a modern outlook, but the letters from her dead father which she keeps reading at every possible opportunity present her as the conscience keeper of the semi-urban Indian women.

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But, there’s a tinge of a feminist in her character which manages to make Tikku Verma a girl to root for. The directors (Radhika and Vinay) have taken the utmost care in representing their characters in the typical western way which brings a sense of equality between opposite genders.

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