PZNZ Media’s Ishkq In Paris (UA) is the love story of Ishkq (Preity Zinta) and Akash (Rhehan Malliek), which starts and blossoms in Paris. Ishkq is half-Indian, half-French and lives with her French mother, Marie (Isabelle Adjani), in Paris, after the divorce of her parents. She is a fun-loving girl but she hates the institution of marriage because of obvious reasons. She meets Akash while travelling in a train from Rome to Paris. He is on his way to Paris as he has to board a plane to London from there the next day. Akash is also an Indian, who is settled in London. He also dislikes the institution of marriage.
Ishkq and Akash strike up a friendship and decide to spend the evening and night together in Paris. They both have a great time together and although Akash is keen to have sex with Ishkq, she is too Indian at heart to allow that. However, both have gotten fond of one another. They have also shared their secrets with one another because they are sure, they would never meet again. In fact, Ishkq categorically asks Akash never to come to Paris again.
As luck would have it, the wedding of Akash’s close friend, Karan, gets him to Paris once again after some time. Desperate to meet Ishkq, he spots her as soon as he reaches Paris and follows her home. He is shocked to know that Ishkq is the daughter of Marie, a very popular French film actress whom he adores. He persuades Ishkq to accompany him to Karan’s wedding and related functions. The two come closer to one another and even end up together in bed. Akash is now convinced, he is madly in love with Ishkq and despite his aversion to marriage, he is actually keen to marry her. But Ishkq holds herself back and turns down his marriage proposal because she is haunted by her parents’ divorce.
Dejected, Akash is all set to return to London the following morning. But before that, Ishkq’s mother tells her something that shakes Ishkq. What is it that she tells Ishkq? Does Ishkq marry Akash? Does she meet her estranged father (Shekhar Kapur)?
Preity Zinta and Prem Raj’s script (additional writing by Kausar Munir, Khalid Azmi and Raaj Verma) moves at a leisurely pace and tests the audience’s patience. The story fails to involve the audience as the two friends behave like one-day friends and refrain themselves from getting attracted to one another, physically or otherwise. Even if Akash does express his keenness on having physical relations with Ishkq, it is clear to the audience that his eagerness is not at all because he has fallen in love with her. In fact, he realises much later that he is in love with her. Even the comedy between Ishkq and Akash is more in dialogues and that intermittent comedy will also appeal only to the class audience. The characters of Ishkq and Akash are so unbelievable and plastic that the audience fails to connect with them. Consequently, the viewers simply aren’t concerned about whether Ishkq and Akash will come together or not. Since there’s not much romance, the audience feels nothing when the two of them separate. Even in the second half, the viewers remain disconnected when Ishkq turns down Akash’s marriage proposal, probably because they have not connected enough with Akash. The emotional scenes fall flat on their face because of the same lack of connection of the audience with the two characters. In short, the story and the screenplay are very tame because romance is almost completely absent, comedy is too class-appealing and very limited, drama is minimal and emotions fail to touch the heart. The drama also becomes monotonous because it revolves mainly around Ishkq and Akash only. Dialogues, penned by Preity Zinta and Prem Raj, are good but very class-appealing.
Preity Zinta acts well but a younger actress would have been more suitable for the role. Rhehan Malliek looks ill-suited to be cast as a hero opposite Preity Zinta. He does a fair job. Isabelle Adjani is quite okay as Marie. Salman Khan adds tremendous star value in an energetic song-dance number. Chunkey Panday leaves a mark in a brief role. Shekhar Kapur has just one scene to make his presence felt.
Prem Raj’s direction is alright but the script is such that it would entertain neither the classes nor the masses and neither the youngsters nor the older generation. Sajid-Wajid’s music is average and the songs haven’t been popularised well enough. Lyrics (Prasoon Joshi, Jalees Sherwani, Kumaar, Kausar Munir and Priya Panchal; French lyrics by Sophie Choudry) are good. Choreography of the Salman Khan song-dance (by Mudassar Khan; song director: Longines Fernandes) is reasonably good. Choreography of the other songs (Saroj Khan and Bosco-Caesar) is okay. Background music (Sajid-Wajid) is very ordinary. Shiuli Thukral and Mohan Bingi’s sets are nice. Manush Nandan’s cinematography is eye-catching. Locations are very eye-pleasing. Rameshwar S. Bhagat’s editing is good. Production values are rich.
On the whole, Ishkq In Paris is a dull love story which will fail miserably at the box-office and not only because of the dull promotion and poor initial.
Released on 24-5-’13 at Inox (daily 3 shows), Metro Big (daily 4 shows) and other cinemas of Bombay thru PVR Pictures Ltd. Publicity: dull. Opening: very weak. …….Also released all over. Opening was horrifyingly poor everywhere.