Film Love Express Review

Cast: Sahil Mehta, Vikas Katya, Mannat Rav, Priyum Galav, Om Puri;

Director: Sunny Bhambani;

Subhash Ghai know that the movie industry needs new talent due to high cost demand of film superstars. It is, as a result, heartening to see Ghai supports newcomers. Unhappily, "Love Express" is a wishy-washy vehicle to accommodate new talents. Everybody connected with this rather touchingly unsettled low-budget romantic comedy set in 'speeding' train, is untested and eager to make an impression.

The amateurishness of presentation is in some ways, a sign of budding talent. The students of Ghai's acting school seem in search of their bearings. And that's what makes them so engaging.

A young couple traveling on a train from Amritsar to Mumbai to celebrate their arranged marriage, decide to go against their parents wishes and break the arrangement. Question is, will the great Indian family allow this rebellion? And then, even if it does, are the youngsters making the right decision?

The set representing the chugging train is quickly filled up with a wedding party, assorted uncles and aunts, nieces, nephews and oddball characters that burst in pop-bhangra songs as though they are auditioning for India's Most Flaunted. The characters revel in their loud oddness because that's the way a Punjabi wedding entourage is expected to behave.

Delicacy or whatever we may call any effort to infuse an artistic restraint to a movie about marriage celebrations, is at a low premium here. The debutant director has a grip over his characters but not much of an idea as to how to package them in any way that appears pioneering.

The two newcomers playing the unenthusiastic bride and the groom struggle with lines that try hard to replicate the trendy pessimism of today's wannabe-cool brigade. The small-town social climbers with their fake designer bags and borrowed accents were far more deliberately credible in Aanand Kumar's "Tanu Weds Manu".

"Love Express" expresses neither a love for the small-town surroundings that it tries to pack into a train of caricatural characters, nor does it display any variability in its narration.

The actors possess no ability to make the loud caricatural characters spoofy in their showiness. At the most, we can smile generously at the new talent that Subhash Ghai's film school throws forward. Decades ago Ghai acted in a movie Umang about youthful aspirations. "Love Express" makes you wonder what these young power really want.

Overall, it is an average film with average execution and less variability in narration.