‘Enti’ she asks with a quizzical look and after a long pause he says ‘…enledhu’. This conversation, if we can call it that, repeats quite a few times during Nee Jathaga Nenundali , the Telugu remake of Aashiqui 2 . Counting the number of times the ‘enti… enledhu’ dialogue is used would have been a better way to kill boredom while waiting for the film to end.
Aashiqui 2 wasn’t a great film to begin with, and largely owed its success to Arijit Singh crooning ‘Tum Hi Ho’ and Ankit Tiwari doing the honours for ‘Sunn ra ha hai na tu’. Not wanting to tamper with the film’s biggest selling point, the Telugu remake also has music by Jeet Ganguli, Mithoon and Ankit Tiwari. The tunes remain the same and Arijit and Ankit sing their respective songs in Telugu. But that alone may not save this lifeless remake.
Sachin Joshi and Nazia Hussain star in this scene-to-scene remake, where nearly all the dialogues are translated from the original version. Sachin is RJ or Raghav, a once-famous singer who now finds comfort in alcohol. The original didn’t give us a reason for his alcoholism and neither does this one. In fact, the laziness in filmmaking shows with the team not having made any effort to change a few details to connect with a regional audience. The opening episode is set in Goa, showing Raghav in concert, getting involved in a tussle, driving in the city and spotting Gayatri Nandana (Nazia) singing in a small bar, pretty much like the original. All the singing and conversations unfold in Telugu and we wonder if it’s Goa.
But this is a smaller issue in a largely unengaging film. Aditya Roy Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor weren’t actors of merit but managed to somewhat hold attention. Sachin Joshi sleep walks through the proceedings, looking and sounding disinterested. Nazia is pretty and makes an effort, but there’s only so much she can do in this gorgeous film that lacks soul. The lead pair has no chemistry, and it’s tough to buy the theory that these are star-crossed lovers. In the latter portions, there’s nothing to check the downward spiral of the film. The viewers in an otherwise empty hall snigger at some of the lines and even yawn at crucial emotional playoffs.
Nee Jathaga Nenundali is a test of endurance and as we walk out in the end, we wonder if it would have been better watching a dubbed version of Aashiqui 2 instead of a remake. With no remarkable change made to the story, screenplay or dialogues, not to mention the lacklustre acting, it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.
