Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan review: Taking love is blind to a whole other level and not in a good way!

Starring Vikrant Massey and Shanaya Kapoor, Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan is a bad interpretation of a Ruskin Bond short story. Here’s why!

Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan review: With the trajectory of Bollywood romantic films these days, I see myself being hesitant before going to a cinema hall now more than ever. But each time I take the plunge, there’s a slight hope that maybe this one will prove me wrong. Unfortunately, films like Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan are exactly the reason why I see that hope dying each Friday. Directed by Santosh Singh and written by Mansi Bagla, this one is based on Ruskin Bond's short story called ‘The Eyes Have It’. The short story had a visually impaired narrator who meets a visually impaired young woman on a train, but both try to hide this fact from each other. But this movie twists the plot a little bit and it only goes downhill from there!

Our protagonists, Jahaan (Vikrant Massey), a visually impaired singer and Saba (Shanaya Kapoor), a theatre actor trying to make it in Bollywood, meet on a train ride for the first time. What’s meant to look like a romantic meet cute quickly starts feeling creepy as an audience as Saba seems to have no self awareness or survival instincts as a woman. In the process of prepping for a role of a visually impaired person, she decides to blindfold herself for four days and call it ‘method acting’. She starts talking to Jahaan, an absolute stranger, on the train, drinks beverages he offers, follows him to his hotel and wants to share the same bed as him without having seen him or known anything real about him. How is there no fear at all given what it’s like for women since the dawn of time? It feels too unrealistic even for the fictional world. Jahaan and Saba spend four days together and as they spend more time together, they slowly start falling for each other. He hides the fact that he is visually impaired and she is quite literally hiding behind a mask. The first time that the two share a kiss is when he mistakenly falls on her half naked and this doesn't invoke any romance; it's creepy at best. At this point in this film is when you truly start questioning what the point is of all of this.

Also Read: Four Years Later review: A complex tale of long distance love that does not quite land!

Vikrant Massey as Jahaan deeply disappoints you. While he does his best with his role, he is too good of an actor to be in a rom-com that makes no sense. He doesn’t talk in the film, he just spits poems left right and centre. He says things like ‘karobaar ke kalaakar’, ‘usne mujhe nazar se nahi nazariye se dekha’, ‘dekhne ke liye aankhein nahi lagti’, and you’re just left there wondering who even talks this superficially? He also decides to leave Saba when she finally takes her blindfold off. Just like most men in Hindi films, he takes decisions on behalf of both of them. There's nothing to really say about Shanaya Kapoor as Saba. Does this seem like just another film to launch a star kid trying too hard to make it in Bollywood? Yes! We also get a new character in the form of Saba’s boyfriend in the second half, Abhinav (Zain Khan Durrani), who makes you question Saba’s choice in men even more.

Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan is a title taken from one of the songs in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, a Sanjay Leela Bhansali directorial. Humming the song brings back peak cinematic memories from the film and also makes you sigh at the absolute irony of what this film does in return to butcher a song like that! Not only does it look insensitive towards visually impaired people, it also is nothing more than a half baked attempt at a story that fits no genre at all!

Aakhon Ki Gustaakhiyan is currently playing at a theatre near you!