The Romantics review: It’s all rah-rah, hardly any nose-digs

The series, directed by Smriti Mundhra, is a fulsome parade of some of the biggest names in Hindi cinema, who became as big as they did after they did a film with Yash Raj. Amitabh Bachchan got a break from doing intense brooders, as the love-lorn poet in Kabhi Kabhie (1976); Yash Chopra also came to his rescue at a time when he really needed a boost, with Mohabbatein (2000).

Apart from Amitabh, there’s the little matter of Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Singh, Anil Kapoor, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Karan Johar, Madhuri Dixit, Juhi Chawla, Kajol, Rani Mukherjee nee Mrs Aditya Chopra, Hrithik Roshan, Ranveer Singh, Anushka Sharma, Bhumi Pednekar– coming and going, giving us their hot takes on what it was like to be an extended part of the YRF family.

It’s all rah-rah, hardly any nose-digs, but then you don’t really expect any in a series like this, about the biggest, most storied production house in Hindi cinema: it’s earned its pole position because the films from Yashraj come with an indelible stamp– they will have good looking leads, they will be high on emotions and drama, they will have foot tapping music, and they will underline the belief that Yashraj’s romances were built on – there is someone out there for everyone. For all you Bollywood-struck peeps, who live in hope that their special someone will one day come for them, this is where it all comes from.

Not just A list stars, big directors join in the hosannahs. Sooraj Barjatya, who remembers Aditya Chopra as ‘a very shy boy, grinning smile’, pitches in a nice little anecdote about how Chopra Sr asked him to intervene in Aditya’s film because he would listen to Sooraj, and not to him. We hear other voices. Screenwriter Jaideep Sahni, casting director Shanoo Sharma, other key people responsible for the smooth running of this mom-and-pop show which has now become a massive corporate, melding art and commerce in a way that every other studio in Mumbai wants to emulate.

But this array of stars, shiny as they are, are familiar to us, from their years of being our on-screen entertainment partners. The real coup of this series is the unveiling of Aditya Chopra, the famously reclusive Yashraj scion, he who started his career with a blockbuster romance that changed how love stories were going to be made in Hindi films after DDLJ came out in 1995, and who has since then, kept on top of the changing trends, turning his studio into a hit-making machine. After DDLJ kickstarted the whole NRI-nostalgia schtick, he turned his gaze on the Indian small town (Bunty Aur Babli), and the aspirational Indian, and made that cool. And a series of films after that, which were a mix of dramas, rom coms, and slick actioners.

Aditya Chopra comes across as an astute businessman who realised that a studio, to sustain itself, needs to nurture more talents, as well as a 360 degrees filmmaker who has been unerringly, and extremely successfully, reading the winds of what the audience was looking for, failing only occasionally. (He does mention the ‘Befikre’ misfire, but I wish he had spoken about one of the best films to have come out of YRF, also one of their biggest flops, ‘Rocket Singh: The Salesman Of The Year).

The N (nepotism) word is addressed just enough to reassure us that the filmmakers did not duck this hot potato. Aditya talks about his younger brother Uday ‘not being a very successful actor’ and how they ‘could not make him a star’, because that’s only something that the audience can. Uday comes on to amplify that thread, and you wonder what it feels like being a part of the most successful studio/ production house in the country and not being able to be a star. Pamela Chopra, their mother, is a surprisingly bracing presence in the series, clearly someone with a mind of her own, and a solid partner to her husband, Yash Chopra, whose films still make us smile and sigh. And the clips featuring Yash Chopra instantly bring back memories of the man who made some of the most durable love stories in Hindi cinema, and how he did more mature, edgy films back in the 70s (remember ‘Daag’?), than his son made in his ‘95 debut: DDLJ deep-sixed youthful rebellion, and brought parental permission to the fore.

There are many sequences featuring, in Kajol’s words, ‘a grumpy’ Aditya Chopra on the sets of DDLJ, but the one that cracked me up is a young Adi standing by a mustard field saying, so if they (Raj and Simran) run through this, won’t it be something? It totally was. That slo-mo running-into-each-other’s-arms became the signature scene of that film which gave young Adi his first big hit, and lead him into becoming one of the biggest producers in the country.

And then there’s one instance in which Shah Rukh Khan asks Aditya Chopra, where is that action film you promised me? That one we can answer. ‘Pathaan’ is currently in theatres racing towards a box office figure no Indian film has before: the romance of the movies is a forever thing.