Cast – Arjun Rampal, Farhan Akhtar, Shraddha Kapoor, Prachi Desai, Purab Kohli, Shashank Arora, Kumud Mishra,
Director – Shujaat Saudagar
Writer – Abhishek Kapoor, Pubali Chaudhuri
The film carries forward the story in literal terms from where it ended in Rock On,8 years back, story of 4 friends whose relationship is tightly bound by their love for music apart from their friendship.
This time it revolves around an incident that impacted their life and their finally coming to terms with it.
Farhan as the central character is adequately supported by Arjun Rampal and Purab Kohli. Shraddha Kapoor is the pleasant surprise here in terms of her performance. While we have had ample chance to see Farhan and Arjun’s intensity in the last one, it’s a welcome change to see Shraddha minus her usual bubbly girl repetitive act in an almost bare faced character fighting her own demons.
The story has a lot of emotional bent to it with a more melancholic tinge which reflects in its music also. The flip side here is that there’s no euphoria anywhere in the story nor in the music. The only peppy rock numbers that appear in flashback aren’t as good as in previous movie.
The movie is nice and sweet with some emotionally tugging high points with a neat set of performances. It also brings to us the pain and agony that goes with struggles of artists who find it difficult to get acknowledgement or recognition and sometimes even work or then have to compromise on what they believe in.
It’s the same team that wrote and gave music in previous one, Abhishek Kapoor ,Pubali Choudhari and Shankar Ehsaan Loy. But somehow, they weren’t able to weave the same magic this time. Shujaat Saudagar couldn’t lift up the movie for the simple reason that the script was very mediocre.
The characters, the situations, the equations they had with each other were not as relatable. The pulsating foot tapping music was missing too and didn’t really help salvage the movie.
Hardcore Farhan fans (if there are) or cinema lovers might find it a good one tine watch. Rock On fans will find it a disappointing one.
Scale 6 on 10.