Get set for desi romance

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After realism hit the big screen and hard-hitting subjects took over, love stories slowly faded from the scene, for a short while though.
But then came Aashiqui 2, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani wherein a melancholic Aditya Roy Kapoor and a dreamy Ranbir Kapoor made Bollywood buffs fall in love with love stories again.
The latest in line is actor-dancer-director Prabhudheva’s Ramaiya Vastavaiya, where the audiences will be treated to dollops of romance rather than his signature South-style action sequences.
Ramaiya Vastavaiya, which is the Hindi remake of Prabhudheva’s directorial debut and Telugu blockbuster Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana, also marks producer Kumar Taurani’s son Girish Kumar’s Bollywood debut in which he shares the screen with Shruti Hassan.
The director recently brought the star cast of the film including Randhir Kapoor, Poonam Dhillon, and Vinod Khanna to the city to spread a word about the project.
Taking about the film, Girish said, “Ramaiya Vastavaiya is a tribute to romance. It has loads of emotions and still it’s a complete family entertainer. We hope to touch hearts with our film. Working with Prabhu sir has been a great learning experience.”
A proud director, Prabhudeva added, “Girish impressed me with his dedication and enthusiasm to do everything the script demanded. He has put in a lot of hard work into this film. In fact he refused to let a body double do the action scenes as he wanted to do the stunts himself.”
On being asked if starting his Bollywood innings with a love story was his first choice, Girish said, “We went through a couple of other scripts before zeroing in on this one as it has all the ingredients to draw the audiences to the theatres.”
The film releases in a few days and a visibly cool Girish chuckled, “I’m not at all nervous but my father definitely is. Having said that, there is a lot of pressure to live up to the hype and justify the opportunity given to me.”
After the customary talks about their respective roles, Randhir Kapoor and Vinod Khanna spoke about the quality of cinema these days.
“Our films have technically improved but the content has declined. The meaning of feelings and emotions has changed. With that the scripts have changed. Cinema reflects the times we live in and we get what we want,” explained Kapoor.
Adding further to it, Khanna said, “There is no demand of great stories today. We don’t want hard-hitting films now. People just want to be entertained. Technically we are as good as our Hollywood contemporaries, but we need stronger content and better screenplay writers to generate quality cinema.”