Expectations
Chetan Bhagat is a celebrity writer and managed to give us some blockbuster books. Some of these books managed to give us big films like '3 Idiots', 'Kai Po Che' and '2 States'. Thus, right since the announcement of his latest book based film 'Half Girlfriend' and the star cast associated with it, the buzz has been extremely high. The trailer and fantastic songs have raised the expectation level to its peak.
Story
'Half Girlfriend' is a story of Madhav Jha (Arjun Kapoor), who joins the top college of Delhi on the basis of his sports skills. Madhav is an ace basketball player, but is very weak when it comes to talking in English. On the basketball court, Madhav meets Riya Somani (Shraddha Kapoor), who is also a good basketball player and belongs to the top elite family. Madhav and Riya become good friends due to their passion towards the sport and slowly start liking each other. Madhav's roommate Shailesh (Vikrant Massey) instigates him to seek a commitment from Riya. Madhav followed Sailesh's suggestion and Riya agree to be his half girlfriend. This leads to a new journey of Madhav and Ria.
The 'Glitz' Factor
'Half Girlfriend' as a book is an average book in comparison to Chetan's other work. This novel desperately needed a good screenplay, which out here is highly missing. The first half has some enjoyable scenes featuring Arjun Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor's friendship and romance.
The cinematography is average, but the movie has been shot on some great locations. The major plus point of this movie is its outstanding music.
Songs such as 'Baarish', 'Thodi Der', 'Tu Hi Hai' and 'Phir Bhi Tumko Chaahunga' are highly melodic.
Shraddha Kapoor looks highly beautiful, especially in her elite dresses. Rhea Chakraborty was refreshingly good and one does wish that she had a meatier role in the film.
The 'Non-Glitz' Factor
A film like 'Half Girlfriend' demands more good scenes and that too, also in the second half of the film. Sadly, the second half of the film has a couple of interesting scenes and nothing else to pump up this dragging and never ending saga. The tempo keeps dropping down maximum times and many of the scenes are loud and repetitive. The reasons are not properly justified and the movie keeps presenting back to back melodramatic scenes.
There are dozens of loopholes in this movie, due to which one fails to connect with the story and its half-baked characters. The screenplay is abrupt, uninteresting and boring in many places. The movie could have been interesting if only the screenplay was crisp, witty and had some beautiful moments between Arjun and Shraddha, like how there were few in the book. While, these songs manage to grab your attention there are a few other songs, especially the English ones which are equally terrible.
Director Mohit Suri fails to extract decent performance from his lead actors and struggles hard to establish the feel of the film.Arjun Kapoor's talent is highly missing in this movie. Seema Biswas is wasted.
Final 'Glitz'
'Half Girlfriend' is a less than half-hearted attempt which will work only due to its star and music power but will end up disappointing the audience for sure.
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