Experiments are great if they usher in something new and meaningful. When the
director is
Devika Bhagat and one of the lead characters is
Abhay Deol (hailing from the legendary
Dharmendra clan), one hopes to see a plot as intriguing as
Manorama Six Feet Under where Devika was the story &
screenplay writer and Abhay was the lead character. So we have expected the actor-director combo to set the screen on fire this time, with a new format of storytelling. Deol has co-produced the rom-com and his real-life girlfriend
Preeti Desai has also teamed up with him, but all to no avail. Thanks to an inane plot, the flick has literally crashed at the
box office.
The numbers are quite dismal after Day 4 (February 3) and the flick has grossed a paltry Rs 4.6 crore as per industry estimates. According to
Box Office India, “
One By Two fared poorly at the box office as it collected a little over Rs 1.50 crore nett over the weekend. The collections were around Rs 50 lakh nett on Friday and Saturday each while there was a little jump on Sunday to Rs 55 lakh nett (approx). The film is a disaster all over as some circuits hardly had any contribution.”
The movie has been released on January 31 and has hit about 500 screens across India. But unless it witnesses some miraculous jump in collections, this one may not be able to recover the costs.
Now, let’s have a look at the story itself and what it brings to the audience.
One by Two revolves around the
parallel lives of two people –
software engineer Amit Sharma (Abhay) and
aspiring dancer Samara Patel (Preeti), born out of wedlock but trying to connect to her rich father. Both Amit and Samara have struggled to cope with their personal hard luck stories and a lot of coincidences bring them together, but not until the last scene. That may hit you hard, especially if you are waiting to watch some bubbly romance, while the surprising twists and turns are not enough to see the movie through.
At best, you get to see stereotypes – a jobless Amit dumped by his girlfriend; his loving mom (
Rati Agnihotri) anxious to see her son settled and Samara’s alcoholic mom (
Lillete Dubey) helped by her daughter. There’s an extremely weak subplot – that of Amit hacking into a dance reality show to wreck the producer who is now dating his ex – which finally connects the central characters.
Serious movie-goers might have expected some Luis Buñuel-type
neo-reality in a plot where
disjointed storylines suddenly converge. But the movie doesn’t step beyond the ground reality; nor does the urban sparkle contribute to the freshness of theme or originality of characters. The gags look tired after a time; the plot fails to impress in spite of endless possibilities and the lead duo can’t display the kind of acting prowess that would have broken the traditional mould and taken the flick to a new height of
urban isolation and
chance connections.
Image: Indiatimes
