Many Imtiaz Ali aficionados consider his debut film to be his best. Four years in the making. it bears an uncanny resemblance in theme and mood to Imtiaz’s most popular film Jab We Met. It introduced both Imtiaz Ali and Abhay Deol. Both moved on after Socha Na Tha, and not necessarily to better places.
The entire ambience in Socha Na Tha exudes a kind of enthusiastic youthful energy that Farhan Akhtar conceptualised for his trend-setting urban fable Dil Chahta Hai. In fact the film’s theme of a don’t-care-a-damn dude’s falling in love with the match that his parents arrange for him is cart-lifted from Farhan’s film where Saif Ali Khan fell in love with Sonali Kulkarni whom he had agreed to ‘view’ on his parents’ insistence.
There’s a zing-sting to Ayesha Takia’s eyeball-rolling enactment of the humiliating way she has been paraded in the past for potential grooms. It’s one of the film’s more endearing moments of soul-tickling interaction.
Not all of the episodes translate as effectively on screen as they would on paper. The urbane wit extended to a befuddled, largely aimless 20-something guy’s search for true love has its bright moments.
The peppering and the window-dressing are delectable. But the real meal lacks the palatable design that we’re led to expect. Abhay’s character was a sly amalgamation of Saif Ali Khan and Aamir Khan in Dil Chahta Hai. Amused, cocky, over-confident and work-shy, Abhay Deol tried hard to project all of this. If we discount his awkward body language and the tendency to appear more like a dud than a dude, he gets more than pass marks, especially since he’s given sequence after sequence to prove himself.
Socha Na Tha offers the comfort of muted mobility. Much of the movement afforded to this slight concoction of urban chic is self-serving and finally futile. But it’s fun while it lasts.
Except for the occasional vulgarity, the dialogues by Ishan Trivedi are supple and tongue-in-cheek. But like much of what goes into the plot, the words are finally more emblems of contemporary connectivity than real people caught in situations of real interaction. Whether it’s the hero breaking into a jig at a traffic jam or the heroine making a face in the mirror, you know these youngsters are getting cute for the camera.
