Dear Zindagi

Cast: Alia Bhatt, Shah Rukh Khan, Ali Zafar, Aditya Roy Kapur, Kunal Kapoor

Writer/Director: Gauri Shinde

Producer/s: Gauri Khan, Karan Johar, R Balki

Music Director: Amit Trivedi

Plot: 

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars (Two and half stars)

Star Cast: Alia Bhatt, Shah Rukh Khan, Ali Zafar, Aditya Roy Kapur, Kunal Kapoor, Ira Dubey

Director: Gauri Shinde

What’s Good: Shah Rukh Khan’s role as the ‘cool’ shrink is easily likable. A surprisingly good second half pulls this film up.

What’s Bad: Gauri Shinde’s film truly picks up only in the second half.

Loo Break: Pre-interval and during the interval is a good time.

Watch or Not?: Dear Zindagi tries to hammer into our heads how important mental health awareness is, through a story that’s sadly not very powerful. For life lessons and Shah Rukh may be, but otherwise not a ‘must watch’.

User Rating:

Kyra (Alia Bhatt) is shown to be a talented, young cinematographer who like many millennials has a messy love life and a yet to bloom career.

Her screwed up relationships with her boyfriends and parents, eventually lead her into seeing a DD (Dimaag Ka Doctor). After an interesting encounter with Jehangir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan), Kyra decides to seek his help for her problems.

In his ‘out of textbook’ ways, Jug helps Kyra open up about her on the surface problems and further digs into the bigger ones. With his ‘cool’ stories, he wins over Kyra’s fears and teaches her to embrace life.

Dear Zindagi Review: Script Analysis

You know you’ve come far in terms of a Bollywood film when for a change, you find a leading lady’s character being introduced by her profession. We first meet Kyra at her workplace and then in the bars and parties. Quite early on, its thrust on us that Kyra has a problem with commitments. In the first ten minutes, she breaks up with Sid (Angad Bedi) after revealing to him that she cheated on him and later she bails on giving Raghuvendra (Kunal Kapoor) a crisp answer about getting serious.

What follows is her dealing with the recent break-up with Raghu and an entire first half is wasted in this. On the other hand, we are time and again shown a strained relationship between her and her parents.

At first, you think she’s just riddled with some love life issues that drive her to seeing a therapist, only to later learn that her tough childhood is responsible for all of it.

What Shinde tries to do is pack a lot of hefty learnings in one script. Such as importance of parenting in shaping an individual, being open to seeking mental health or societal acceptance for a girl with multiple relationships and a budding career.

Unfortunately, they don’t all blend seamlessly in the film.

The contextual build up is unnecessary and constant in the film. Jehangir Khan’s character being introduced at a ‘Mental Health Awareness’ conference is completely stupid. Also, the jokes that he cracks there are far too immature.

Overall, the humor element is too forced and Kyra’s uncle asking her if she’s Lebanese instead of Lesbian is too shallow a joke.

The focus all through remains on Kyra and hence her love interests, Raghu (Kunal Kapoor), Sid (Angad Bedi) or Rumi (Ali Zafar) get no background whatsoever.

Jehangir’s character gets preachy at most occasions and that’s a sign of how bad a therapist he actually is. Hell, he’s even seen discussing his personal issues with her, which is a big ‘No, No’ in his profession.

Dear Zindagi has its heart in the right place, it just gets stuck in the rut. Ridden with cliches such as a gay visiting a shrink (to help him accept himself), to a software engineer her family introduces to who calls himself Surrresh in accent is simply ridiculous.

Dialogues like Jug saying “Genius is knowing when to stop” say much more than needed and keep coming as a pleasant surprise in the film.

Dear Zindagi Review: Star Performance

Alia Bhatt is talented no doubt and gives a measured performance in this film. She particularly shines in the scenes where her character breaks down. We are reminded a lot of her Highway character in certain scenes, such as the one where she confronts her family, although this time, you don’t really feel the same pain.

Shah Rukh Khan as the uber cool shrink, Jug is simply adorable. Flashing his dimples, playing his age and a matured dressing, all put him in the likable category. His character gets preachy but still remains to be the spark in the story.

Kunal Kapoor as Raghu, looks the enticing young man. He does his job well and I wish we could have seen more of him in the film.

Angad Bedi is hardly there for two scenes in the film as Sid, one of Kyra’s boyfriends. He has nothing to do, other than just look good.

Ali Zafar’s act as Rumi, the musician is likable enough. One could say he looks like the perfect rebound guy! 

Ira Dubey and Yashaswini Dayma are decent in their supporting roles.

Aditya Roy Kapur’s cameo is charming.