Sometimes the title of a movie speaks a lot about its content. Debutant director Kabir Sadanand's movie Popcorn Khao! Mast Ho Jao is as corny, unimaginative and uninspiring as its title.
Superficiality is personified in all the four leading characters of the film. The 20-plus director thought that he could cash in on today's youth through his juvenile story that is roughly based on the comic characters of Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead. Then he tries to highlight the complexities of youth through a love 'quadrilateral' with one guy loving a girl who loves someone else, who further is infatuated with another girl. Confusion! No problem. Popcorn Khao.
The film tells the story of three friends Rahul [Akshay Kapoor], Tanya [Tanishaa] and Goldie [Yash Tonk]. Together they are known as 'kurta' gang. Goldie is in love with Tanya, but she loves Rahul. And Rahul is smitten by the new 'bombshell' on the college block - Sonia [Rashmi Nigam]. A lose-lose situation for all.
So after a couple of reels and packs of popcorn, the movie moves away from candyfloss juvenility to showing the transition of the gradually maturing Rahul, who takes a five-year break from his Kurta gang and goes to Mumbai to make a career in music.
Music magnate VK or Vikramaditya Kapoor (Deepak Tijori) spots Rahul's talent and decides to give him a break. But as this world is a small place (particularly in movies) it turns out that VK is Sonia's dad, the girl who had Rahul wrapped around her finger in college. And it also turns out that she already has a boyfriend named Kabir (played by the director). (You see, the director so conveniently makes the love quadrilateral buck stop at himself).
A struggler in the industry, Rahul spends his time drawing sketches of his friends of yore on his room walls, remembering the small moments that solidified the strong bond between them.
The chief flaw of the movie is that the characters in it are so superficial that even the emotional moments between them make you yawn. Secondly, the poor acting by the two leading ladies Rashmi (who is always conscious about her looks) and Tanishaa (who hasn't got half the talent as her elder sister Kajol). Akshay Kapoor is tolerable and Yash Tonk only ends up giving exaggerated facial expressions (a habit from TV serials).
Director Kabir Sadanand has put too much emphasis on style (the fast zoom-in, zoom out, the stylish cinematography, sleek editing) but he has grossly failed to create any depth in the characters of his story. Jelena Jakovljevic's number is uplifting. The emotional moments in the second half only embarrass a viewer.
Anybody going to see the movie should heed to the advice given in the title itself - that is not to forget to take a good number of packs of popcorn. Otherwise, the movie will make you sleep.
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Popcorn Khao, coz the movie is sleep inducing