Love Aaj Kal trailer: Sara Ali Khan and Kartik Aaryan romance in trademark Imtiaz Ali style

As the line from the Aahun Aahun song from Love Aaj Kal goes “Ek hi kahaani bas badle zamana”, Imtiaz Ali’s next offering tells stories of two couples in different times. Ali’s third film with Love Aaj Kal (2009) starred Deepika Padukone and the rom-com mascot Saif Ali Khan who played a double role of two men from different time periods. Cinematically and screenwriting craft wise it still remains one of Ali’s finest works. Ten years later, Ali has roped in Saif’s daughter Sara Ali Khan and the new star on the block Kartik Aaryan and the newcomer Arushi Sharma to play the couples from 1990 and 2020.

Ali and producers have decided to go with the same title as the previous one Love Aaj Kal and the film’s trailer has all the trademark Imtiaz Ali elements. The quirky dialogues, picturesque locations, off-beat yet cinematic moments, and characters romancing and fighting it out in the trademark Imtiaz Ali style. Renowned filmmakers have a style of their own and you can identify a movie’s director by looking at certain elements, even if the director’s name is not revealed. Say Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsesse in the west and Imtiaz Ali, Neeraj Pandey, Rajkumar Hirani here in contemporary Hindi cinema to name a few.

Talking about the lead pair, Sara and Kartik (SarTik as the fans gathered at the trailer launch were calling out and had shirts and placards waving) look fresh together and the chemistry seems to work. The debutante Arushi Sharma in whatever we see of her in the trailer makes her presence felt. Just like the Brazilian actor Giselli Monterio did in 2009’s Love Aaj Kal in which she played a young Sikh girl.

Sara looks confident as the urban Zoe. May walkaway with lot of praise just like she did in her debut Kedarnath (2018) opposite Sushant Singh Rajput. It’s good to see Kartik Aaryan fighting for love than bashing it like in his earlier movies which had a danger of monotony setting in and him getting typecast in that role. Great directors can get good performances out of actors. Ali had managed that with the fairly raw Deepika Padukone in the previous Love Aaj Kal. Kartik seems to have been directed well in this one.

To sum it up, it’s good to see a love story coming up in a long time. It’s something fresh from the small town ‘content driven’ films that we have been watching for some time now. And it’s even better to see this film coming from the banner Maddock Films which has produced some of these small town content driven films like Bala, Stree, Made In China. Love Aaj Kal should be fun to watch when it releases in theatres on this Valentine’s Day.