Chand Mera Dil Review:
What happens when Gen Z children, full of neglect and carrying generational trauma, fall for each other? “Suffering”? In other words, Vivek Soni’s Chand Mera Dil, starring Ananya Panday and Lakshya.
Twenty-one year olds Chandni Prasad (Ananya Panday) and Aarav Rawat (Lakshya) meet at their Hyderabad engineering college. It is love at first glance, or say dance, for him. Chandni also starts liking him. When her friend says he isn’t so special, she defends him saying “he looks like those men who love softly but intensely”. Spoke too soon?
Aarav, a chainsmoker who smokes three cigarettes in one go to clear stress, is a brilliant student, so is Chandni, besides being a Bharatanatyam dancer and basketball player. As they get deep into their puppy love, the focus shifts from studies to their relationship. What follows is falling grades, missing classes and missing some very important things that actually trigger the whole plot.
Things you do for love may come to bite you in the a**. Don’t we know it? Haven’t we lived it? But when you are in love, you are in love. After all Kareena Kapoor’s Geet said in Jab We Met, “Jab koi pyaar mein hota hai toh koi sahi-galat nahin hota.”
So, Aarav does a Shah Rukh Khan (It is a Dharma Productions film), spreads his arms, and proposes to his ‘Chand’. Remember they are still in college and practically have no money.
They have an unbelievably supportive college, friends, and colleagues. Aarav has two friends and together they give off serious 3 Idiots vibes. Keep your eyes peeled for a fun Arjun Reddy reference. And no, it’s not the smoking, drinking, or promiscuity.
Soon, their priorities shift. So, there are sacrifices. Responsibility, exhaustion, frustration, suffocation, and bills pile up. They realise love alone is not enough. Then the blame game begins, and we see how much we mirror our parents, no matter how much we don’t want to be like them. Then we ask, “Did we do enough to not become our parents?” Do we repeat our parents’ mistakes or get over trauma and forge our new path? What is a complete family? Chand Mera Dil tries to find an answer to such important questions.
Chandni and Aarav’s relationship bears the brunt of childhood trauma and the idea of what it means to be a ‘mard’. The fight starts as respect vs love, but becomes about ego, compatibility, and expectations. In a way Chand Mera Dil reminds you of Thappad. The film is also a reflection of how the ghost of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna continues to loom large over Dharma Productions.
Ananya Panday and Lakshya have good chemistry. They also show emotional heft in intensely charged scenes but the lead actors are let down by a convoluted script and extra runtime. Happy to see Iravati Harshe in a mainstream Bollywood film, hope to see her more on screen.
Saiyaara-fame Faheem Abdullah’s voice in the titular song Chand Mera Dil is the beating heart of the film, which falls more than a mile short of being a great love story.
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