Made in the same mould as I Hate Luv Storys, Aisha and Anjaana Anjaani, Break Ke Baad is another of those urban mushy love stories albeit with better performances. The film starts off well. Especially, the titles are presented in a novel way. But it tapers off to the usual ending where you know what’s going to happen next.
Danish begins his film in a good way by showing a love story of Abhay Gulati (Imran Khan) and Aaliya (Deepika Padukone), which begins during their childhood and continues to high-school days. Aaliya’s character as an aspiring actress is established well in the beginning when she stands on the bench of the school and does a Marilyn Monroe act. Both Abhay and Aaliya are Hindi film buffs who share their first kiss while watching Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Aaliya hates doing her homework and spends time in grooming herself and listening to Hindi film songs.
While Abhay is very sincere, loving and committed, he’s pretty dull. He works in his father’s theatre, but is clueless about his future. He does not believe in hurting other people’s sentiments. Whereas Aaliya is very bold and insensitive and does not believe in being committed to a relationship. She wants to become an actress but is not allowed to do so by her mother (Sharmila Tagore). Aaliya also loves to drink and smoke because it gives her confidence. Tired of Abhay’s attention to his job, Aaliya keeps calling Abhay Julati and keeps taunting him to take a break from the job. For some strange reason, she keeps calling her mother by her first name Ayesha as she was brought up single-handedly by her mother: Her father had abandoned them when Aaliya was young. Aaliya decides to move to Australia for further studies and takes a break from Abhay. She lives with her strict aunt for sometime, but then moves into a beach shack accommodation, run by a gruff tattoo artiste (Shahana Goswami) and an oversexed but harmless bar man (Yudhishtir Urs). Abhay, worried about her adventures, follows Aaliya to Australia and ends up taking his passion — cooking and setting up a restaurant. Aaliya goes on to become an actress against everyone’s wishes.
Lillette Dubey, as Abhay’s thrice-divorced aunt who refers to Aaliya as chudail, keeps advising Abhay on love and relationships. The second half of the movie prolongs with makeups and break- ups with Aaliya learning the importance of relationship. You realise what the end is going to be even before the film ends.
Debutante director Danish Aslam has tried the age-old formula “an old wine in a new bottle”. The narrative is dull and boring in the second half, leaving you wishing that you could wind up the film in 15 minutes flat. Renuka Kunzru’s dialogue and screenplay adds some charm to it. There are interesting moments like Lilette Dubey blaming the several remakes of Devdas for spoiling the youth. Or Abhay’s changing his relationship status on Facebook to “It’s complicated” are humorous. Vishal-Shekhar’s music is hardly hummable. Imran Khan is back again with his cute lover boy looks after Jaane Tu… Deepika Padukone is impressive as the confident girl and enthralls you with an earnest act. Sharmila Tagore is very good. Lilette Dubey is great. Shahana Goswami has been totally wasted in the role. Yudhisthir Urs is a big surprise.