Two high-profile couples will be seen on screen this month, and it will be interesting to see whether Vivek Oberoi-Aishwarya Rai and Kareena Kapoor-Shahid Kapur click in reel life as well as they do in real life.

The two releases lined up for the second and third week of August are debutant director Samir Karnik's "Kyun Ho Gaya Na" starring Aishwarya and Vivek and Ken Ghosh's second feature film "Fida" with Kareena and Shahid.

How eager are audiences to see these Page 3 pairs together on screen? The world loves a lover...but put two of them together too often, and audiences get bored into indifference.

It may sound shocking but that's the way the cookie crumbles in showbiz. Films featuring real life couples tend to be given the thumbs down.

In the era gone by, films featuring Raj Kapoor and Nargis like "Andaz", "Chori Chori" and "Barsaat" did well. The mystique survived because there was no active film press to keep harping on the real life togetherness. But by the time Dharmendra and Hema Malini came along, the active print press wrote relentlessly about the couple's relationship, thereby diminishing the impact of their onscreen romance.

Though their earlier films like "Naya Zamana" and "Jugnu" did well and Ramesh Sippy's "Sholay" created history, the audience had lost interest by the time the duo came to their final phase as an onscreen couple in "Aas Paas", "Rajput", "Dil Ka Heera", "Maa" and "Charas". Most of the later films featuring the couple bombed.

Ditto with the other famous couple, Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh. Apart from Ravi Tandon's "Khel Khel Mein" and Yash Chopra's "Kabhi Kabhie", all their films together like "Jhootha Kahin Ka", "Duniya Meri Jeb Mein" and "Zehreela Insaan" were flops.

Akshay Kumar and Raveena Tandon were a successful pair in Rajiv Rai's "Mohra" but all their subsequent films including the last one, Pramod Chakravarty's "Barood", were a miserable flop.

While Akshay and Raveena weren't really paired together in Madhur Bhandarkar's cops thriller "Aan: Men At Work", in "Police Force" they were a 'farce' to reckon with.

Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai were a dream team when they worked together in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam". When Bhansali announced plans to make his grand historical-musical "Bajirao Mastani", Aishwarya had to be replaced by Kareena Kapoor since the original actress refused to work with Salman.

Salman was supposed to do a guest appearance in yet another Aishwarya Rai starrer "Kuch Na Kaho". But after their fallout, Salman was hastily replaced by his brother Arbaaz Khan. In David Dhawan's comedy "Hum Kissi Se Kam Nahin", Salman had to be replaced by Ajay Devgan.

Just goes to show that real life pairs could prove dicey for producers when they decide to quit on a personal level while on the job -- unless they happen to be thorough professionals like Bipasha and Dino Morea who continued to work after their break-up in "Ishq Hai Tumse" and the unreleased "Chehra".

How unlike Rajesh Khanna and Tina Munim who painted the sets red with their excessive togetherness, as seen in eminently forgettable potboilers like "Bewafaa" and their home production "Alag Alag". After their parting, producers who had signed the two together were left in the lurch.

Last year, Bipasha Basu and John Abraham who are very much a real life pair scored a minor success in "Jism". But this year they came a cropper in Vikram Bhatt's "Aetbaar".

Now it's the turn of yet another real life pair to make an impression on screen.

Aishwarya Rai and Vivek Oberoi, so much talked about as a real life couple, will be seen together in "Kyun Ho Gaya Na". Will they make news on celluloid? Distributors are eminently gung-ho about the pair. A sneak-peak reveals Aishwarya and Vivek to be a dream team.

"In any case we don't intend to do a string of films together, please! So the freshness of the pair would never be spoilt," says Vivek.

Kareena and Shahid will be seen a week later in "Fida", to be followed by Satish Kaushik's "Milenge Milenge". The producers of the latter (Tips) worked overtime to reach theatres first in the hope that the audience would respond positively to the much talked about pair.

But a note of warning should be sounded here. High-profile couples don't render themselves to any swift strokes of celluloid chemistry. This has been proven repeatedly by the cold vibes shared between real life couples in the past including, most recently, models Ashish Chowdhary and Samir Bangargi in "Shaadi Ka Ladoo".

And though Rajesh Khanna was close to his two favourite co-stars Sharmila Tagore and Mumtaz, they were never really romantically involved. That's why they looked so convincing faking romantic emotions.

Will Aishwarya and Vivek and later, Kareena and Shahid (both the actresses, professionally senior to their heroes) solve the mystery of the missing chemistry?

If they do, Salman Khan would be a happy man. He's just started working with his real lady-love Katrina Kaif in his home production based on the 1969 Hollywood film "Cactus Flower" to be directed by David Dhawan.

Let's hope this one lasts.