3 out of 5

Directed by: Kunal Kohli

I have only watched a small handful of Indian films, and admittedly they’ve tended towards the big action types that manage to get hyped up in the US as well, which has been an approximate trickle to a small stream of titles across the 2010s and 2020s. While I’m sure some things have happened across my TV outside of that already narrow selection, nowhere near enough for me to say I have an understanding of the cultural touches or stylistic templates to expect beyond some stereotypes stemming from when we American types called Hindi-language movies – like Fanaa – Bollywood. So although I can factor in a long runtime (169 minutes) and story breaks for dance/song numbers and genre mixing (from romcom to action thriller to tragedy) as part of those stereotypes, it hardly feels fair to judge the movie by those things, or oppositely give it some ignorant pass by considering them “staples” of an incredibly large and surely multi-“stapled” genre; and I may not be able to completely halt myself from comparing to my framework of English-language films. So what can I do? Provide this preamble.

Fanaa was made in 2006. Setting aside my minimal awareness of gender roles in Indian culture, that date hovers over the film’s dated setup: when the blind dancer / singer Zooni (Kajol) travels to New Delhi from Kashmir and falls in love with her tour guide, Rehan (Aamir Khan), who is pretty much a composite of every negging male from the 90s / 00s, and woos the ladies by spouting overly suggestive poetry at them. Because this is 2006, Zooni’s blindness isn’t really important, it’s just a plot point, or, charmingly, a source of humor – you’re looking the wrong way, Zooni, you silly blind girl! Ho ho. And, y’know, great romance because she can’t see how sexy Rehan is, wholly wooed by his PUA style approach, which is inclusive of pinning her against the wall while they’re alone and continuing with his witty rhymes; meanwhile he pretty much only falls for her based on her looks, cueing wind-blowing-through hair and a repeated musical leit motif whenever he looks at her.

While the poetry bit is something that falls into my cultural blindspot – there’s an exchange between all the characters at different points of this whimsical, sing-song prose, and Rehan is especially praised for how clever his are – it falls into a general romcom vibe of playful back-and-forth, though, again, it tended to feel a bit predatory and creepy during Fanaa’s cinematic era, and the movie doesn’t slouch in that regard. The same romcom-rules apply to Zooni’s / Rehan’s love at first “sight” partnership.

Allowing for all of that, this section of the film drags. I’m sure some of the cleverness in the wordplay was lost in translation, but nothing evolves in the first half or so of the movie: as soon as our lead duo meet, it essentially repeats their exact same interaction again and again, with a couple of song numbers thrown in. Kajol is good at not playing up the blindness (beyond where the script demands it), and though Khan is a bit too Joshua Jackson looking for my tastes (no shade – he’s just not my style), he’s a charmer – you buy him as the jerk the hot girl can’t help but fall for. But still, the story repetition and general flatness of director Kunal Kohli’s shooting style (if often well-framed and brightly colored) makes the bit a chore to get through, songs included, as they’re catchy but somewhat pedestrian in performance and staging. Like, tilt the camera and do one twirl and that’s all we get. I’m not expecting the overblown setups of the stereotypes I mentioned at the start, but I still want a little more than someone essentially just staring at the screen and lip-syncing, especially if nothing else in the lyrics or background adds anything to the story.

Saying much beyond this about the story would essentially spoil it, but let it suffice to say that we take a hard pivot at the halfway point, and suddenly we’re jumping out of helicopters in snow-covered mountains, dealing with Kashmiri terrorists, and having shootouts on dueling snowmobiles. That means you can read the slow start as a setup for this twist, but from the way the first half is shot and paced, I think it’s intended as a true romcom; the movie also performed well enough, so culturally, or just in a more general not-my-thing way, maybe Kajol and Khan had some onscreen sparks I missed that made it a good watch. I was happy for the pivot, either way.

The movie – to me – becomes significantly more interesting at this point, though it is purely some soap opera stuff. It’s played up effectively, though, and here the extended pace allows us to move through some difficult spots in Zooni’s / Rehan’s relationship with some needed friction; jumping to easy resolutions would’ve made the pivot pretty worthless. The plot also has some pretty surprising swerves, particularly towards the end. The overall pivot is tonally a surprise, but there are enough hints in the first part that something along its lines is coming – you’re just maybe not expecting it to go full-on action thriller for a bit; but the later story zags I wouldn’t have called, such that for the last twenty minutes or so, I really didn’t know the direction the movie was going to take.

Besides the genre of the second half being maybe more to my liking, it necessitates giving Kajol and Khan a ton more dimensions to play with with their characters, and that pays off, and I’d think would make some of the romance stuff – for those genre fans, still hanging in there – a bit more powerful as well.

Overall, Fanaa feels… very much of its time, whether thats Indian cinema or movies overall. Its expansive settings can somewhat justify what was apparently a pretty big budget, but, I’m sorry to say, it comes across as fairly cheap at the same time, surely informed by a very plain, unchallenging script in its first half, and then director Kohli’s / cinematographer Ravi K. Chandran’s use of staid blue filters for its second half, giving its cabin-in-the-snow set an unfortunate made-for-TV blandness. I’m guessing that those more in the know of stars Kajol’s and Khan’s careers might enjoy the romantic pairing that kicks things off, though storywise, this is mostly a wash, and frustratingly dated in its male / female attitudes. Without the second half, I’d be rating the movie lower; but we have the second half, during which the soapiness of the premise really gets ratcheted up in fun and thrilling ways, and the movie is able to take some successfully surprising swerves as it rounds the bend to its conclusion.