It's a cheap, hackneyed and sensational melodrama. Nevertheless, this seems to be a poor representative of a national cinema.
Besides my primary task of tracking down several versions of "A Star Is Born," my other interest in "Aashiqui 2" was to see a movie from India, of which I've seen embarrassingly few as of yet. In the 2018 remake, too, at least the camera movement is striking. These pictures expanded the visual properties of cinema. The 1937 "A Star Is Born," on the other hand, was remarkable as an early three-strip Technicolor effort, while the 1954 version was an early musical drama to be filmed in CinemaScope and also experimented with color.
Most clichés in the hack's guide to romantic filmmaking are copied, too, including a repeated embrace in the rain.
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The entire picture is constantly underscored by background music, if not downright lyrical tunes, lest the spectator be left without a cue as to how to feel emotionally, I suppose, or be encouraged to consider any of the proceedings intelligently. He almost runs her over during this drunk-driving escapade, crashes into a tree, and, then, she smiles at him as he tries to help her pick up her spilled tomatoes! Things don't get better from there, either. This first montage leads to one of the most offensive meet-cutes I've seen, which is saying something given how many stupid romance flicks I've endured. There are also several lousy montages, beginning with the fading-star alcoholic driving while drinking and looking his most ridiculously pretentious as he sports a beanie, scarf, sunglasses and that perpetual stubble. Until the last shot of her in front of a crowded stadium, most of the music concert shots are blatantly stitched together from separate footage of crowds in between the staged, cramped scenes of the characters singing in front of a skeleton of the first couple rows of an audience. This would be one thing if anything interesting were done with the fact that they're empty vessels lip syncing to playback singers-think "Singin' In the Rain" (1952), for instance, where Jean Hagen amusingly provides her own dubbing for her character, who in the story is being dubbed by another character-but there's no acknowledgement or fun had here with the fantasy. "Just like that," as the drunkard repeatedly says whilst staring at his protégé. overacting ones there only to look pretty.
They, too, merely remain in the picture as bodies. Moreover, unlike Garland, Barbra Streisand, Kris Kristofferson, Lady Gaga and even Bradley Cooper, the actors in this one don't do their own singing. We get none of this in "Aashiqui 2," which, instead, casts two relative unknowns in the leads. Judy Garland's tragic image was the most striking case, with the lead male's alcoholism becoming an allegory for her real-life drug problems and difficulties with the Hollywood studio system, the press and her fans. In the first three iterations, the leading actresses were all attempting a comeback on some level. "A Star Is Born" is at its best when the scenario-originally about Hollywood filmmaking and only later, in 1976, 2018 and this version, about the music industry-reflects the real-life images of the stars that made it. This body is filled with generic Bollywood escapism into emotionalism, including sappy songs. Only the body remains, which is the least alluring part.
Unfortunately, the filmmakers here stripped "A Star Is Born" of all of its self-reflexive intelligence, as well as the superior innovations in production-leaving merely the plot and reworked scenes. Even the Hindi language here is comprised of many borrowings from English. ("Aashiqui 2," itself, by the way, was also remade-in Telugu as "Nee Jathaga Nenundali" (2014).) "Aashiqui 2," however is a combination of two traditions, of Bollywood and Hollywood. I'm sure there've been more than two of those, too. In India, a sequel may not mean the same thing it does in Hollywood, apparently, as the title of "Aashiqui 2" would suggest that it's a continuation of the narrative from "Aashiqui" (1990), but it's not instead, this is another remake of a familiar Hollywood scenario, "A Star Is Born" (made in 1937, 19 before being once again remade in 2018), while supposedly being a repetition of the themes of the first "Aashiqui," which seems to merely mean that it's another romantic musical.
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