It’s not a bad movie at all: that’s the good news. The rest of the news is not too good: that the film plods, ends differently just to be different for the sake and heck of it, and fails to touch the viewer.

It’s been years since the NRI romance/rom-com genre has crossed its expiry date: almost two years ago, we got abysmal fare like “Break Ke Baad,” and “Anjaana Anjaani” in this genre. A bountiful year like 2011 eschewed this genre completely. But instead of bidding a quiet and dignified RIP to this kind of film that served its purpose and once enriched Hindi cinema with the opening of many global NRI territories and with money-spinners and successes from the cult “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” to the ho-hum but successful “Dostana,” Shakun Batra prefers to revisit the genre.

Not that this is wrong per se: for a debut director, Batra is quite ahead of many new and over-hyped morons in the field. But a director must also know what works with the audience and what irks it. The screenplay plods in the first half after a promising 20 minutes. By interval time, you do not believe that only an hour has passed and there is barely any drama, leading to some tedium. 

The second half takes off on a great note, but alas! 20 minutes into it the ennui comes back. The bold – by Hindi film standards – end isn’t well built-up and justified, and the pre-climax being as mushy and moony as any clichéd film in this genre makes things worse. Batra and his co-writer Devitre should have justified the unconventional culmination. As things go, the viewer, already bored and listless, fails to appreciate the end, which seems tailored to please only a miniscule quantum of ‘realistic cinema’ freaks. One mercy, and a big enough one, is that the Kapoors do not behave like the loud Punjabis of a zillion other films, but like normal la-di-dah folks. And even the Catholic family of the heroine stay away from clichés. More – there are no bhangra-pop numbers or Punjabi aunties.

The story, my Hollywood-savvy colleagues tell me, mixes up the desi NRI film with “What Happened In Vegas” and one more Hollywood film. Rahul Kapoor (Imran Khan) is completely dominated by his high-society parents (Boman Irani and Ratna Pathak Shah) who decide both the ties he wears and the ties he is supposed to have in his professional and future married life! Alone for the Christmas-New Year week, this 25 year-old virgin encounters his polar opposite Rianna Braganza (Kareena Kapoor), upper middle-class, couldn’t-care-a-damn-about-rules-or-cleanliness and far from a virgin, in a superstore and one thing leads to another.

Well, not in the conventional sense – they do not fall in love, break into song, or hop into bed. They get sozzled at a pub on Christmas Eve and get married in a 24-hour wedding chapel! The next morning, they realize this and want to annul the marriage. But somehow they end up spending the week together, and their lives go out of control. Come New Year, life will never be the same for them again.

Any story narrated for an audience, unfortunately, needs drama and crisis to become interesting, and this is what “EMAET” lacks. Even the rebellion sequence by Rahul comes across as tepid in the way it is located in the narrative and presented. The dialogues have a sparkle all-too-rarely, and the funny happenings come at too infrequent intervals, like the restaurant date and washroom sequence, or the interaction with Rianna’s granny. 

The music is a major downer, and Amit Trivedi messes up the opportunity to do his first big-budget romcom for a prestigious banner – romcoms as a genre thrive on great songs, lip-synched rather than not, and this one has neither.

Handicapped by various such constraints, Kareena Kapoor seems like she is in any other film, “3 Idiots” downwards, but happily rises to a different level in some key sensitive sequences in some parts of the film, like the sequence where Rahul and she met his mom. The lesser-known actors playing her family, especially her dad, are delights. Ratna (in an extension of her “Sarabhai Vs. Sarabhai” persona) and Boman are serviceable and the actress portraying Ram Kapoor’s wife who lusts after young men is superb.

However, if “EMAET” will make a positive difference to anyone, it will be for Imran Khan. As Rahul, he is so not-perfect that you feel that he has gone through all this in real life, with parents telling even how to improve his table manners at a party or make him kowtow to every wish of theirs. 

And that reminds me of the other critics who have raved about this film because they, like Mr. and Mrs. Kapoor, claim to care for Hindi cinema but want it to rectify what they think are its “imperfections” in their eyes to ‘make a better impression’ on the outside world. “EMAET,” in short, is what they want Hindi rom-coms to be, never mind if their opinion are like a drop in the audience ocean. Shakun Batra, like this tribe, forgets that within the film, they endorse Rahul wanting to be accepted for what he is. Oddly enough, Hindi cinema is no different from Rahul. 

Dharma Productions’ and UTV Motion Pictures’ Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu 

Produced by: Hiroo Johar, Yash Johar & Ronnie Screwvala

Directed by: Shakun Batra

Music: Amit Trivedi

Starring: Kareena Kapoor, Imran Khan, Boman Irani, Ratna Pathak Shah, Ram Kapoor, Soniya Mehra & others

Rating: **1/2