It's dumb and will be. Jab tak hai jaan.

If you got vegetables and spices, you can chop them up and make a salad. Or you can make Ratatouille. Jab Tak Hai Jaan is vegetable salad served just like that. It has an unhealthy dose of nauseating romance, tears, song and dance. And of course.. Lots of vitamin M poured in.

With a story and cast like that he could have done so much more, but no; Yash Chopra chose to serve this story raw and unpolished, a collage of all the cliches he previously created. What could have ended in an hour and a half and made people smile in the end, was dragged to a full three hours and made the audience take naps and set high scores in a few video games, waiting to escape from the same old drama, heartbreak and cheesy dialogues. There was Anushka Sharma in the same old tomboy role. Katrina Kaif in the pretty Barbie doll role and King Khan striking his signature pose at every opportunity available. 

Let’s start from the beginning. Major Samar Anand is the chief of the Indian army bomb diffusion squad. He’s so daring he doesn’t even want to wear a safety suit while diffusing bombs. He just digs into the bomb and pokes around and voila! Bomb diffused! How? Oh come on.. He’s the hero. He’ll always choose the right wire to cut. 

Enter Akira Rai- Documentary filmmaker for Discovery channel, completely down to earth, bold and daring enough for two men put together. And of course, as per norm, she is completely devoid of girly emotions like love and romance. A girl who doesn’t remember crying in her whole life, she finds out about the most touching love story of Major Samar Anand. 

Now we dive into the memories of Samar, where the typical love story between him and Meera begins. There’s always a rich girl asking God for a handsome husband, and a poor guy working double shifts, and a richer fiancé who has no idea what’s going on. She’s usually good at acting in her own charming way, but Meera in the movie sounds like a dumb rich kid who did not really have to be smart to get her work done. And Samar, talented and bursting with energy, teaches her how to live life and use her brains more than her impeccable manners. The poor Samar sweeps her right off her feet. She’s torn between obeying her father and following her heart. She ends up dumping him, and don’t worry about spoilers here because why else would Samar be in the Indian army ten years later trying so hard to die? 

But Akira finds the story amazing, cries for it and marvels at her tears. So obviously, being a filmmaker, she goes after him to get a story. Well, I guessed that an hour before it happened.

When after 90 sleepy minutes there was an interval we had nothing to wait for in the next half. All the bearable songs were already over, we had had enough of Samar’s bike and uniform and wondered who designed Katrina’s clothes to make her look fat with beefy legs. Music was a little disappointing; most songs sounded stale and easy to forget. We had no idea, that the second half will actually have a story and it will be a game called “I know what will happen next”. 

Jab Tak Hai Jaan has two reasons to become a huge hit. One is that it was the last one by the legend and people will ‘respect’ it, and second is the Anushka Sharma in shorts and plunge-neck dancing around the army camp. I have new respect for YC who made his signature so strong in his movies that any given scene can be identified as a ‘typical’ Yash Chopra work. That is what his final movie will be. Typical. With all due respect, 2 on 5.