‘Ishq Vishk Rebound’ Review: How Does One Rebound From This Rohit Saraf-Starrer?

To make your protagonist a writer is certainly a brave choice in film, especially when you don't have the dialogue writers to back this claim up. It's like Kho Gaye Hum Kahan making Siddhanth Chaturvedi’s character a “popular” comedian but then he ends up being unfunny. 

The Ishq Vishk Rebound equivalent is Rohit Saraf’s character Raghav who is scouted to be a Bollywood screenwriter because he wrote an allegedly mind-blowing play. But he also says things like, “Writing, like love, is hard”. Maybe he saves his entire writing prowess – his way with words, if you will – for his scripts. 

Ishq Vishk Rebound has moments that are fun – some of Saraf’s comedic timing (yes, the narrator is Fleabag inspired) lands. His frustration when things don’t go his way is palpable. For a particular target audience, his journey with love and relationships might even be painfully relatable. The way the film weaves in his “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy into different aspects of his life is also quite an interesting watch.

We meet Raghav when he's trying to write the climax for his scripts with his boss (played by Kusha Kapila) breathing down his neck about deadlines. The story, naturally, is a love triangle based on his life. Cue flashback. 

Raghav believes his parents have a blissful marriage so he practically goes looking for chaos by becoming too emotionally intertwined in his childhood best friends’ love story. Sahir (Jibraan Khan) and Sanya (Pashmina Roshan) have one thing in common – ‘daddy issues’. The film's words, not mine. So clearly, they have a very strong foundation for this relationship….not. 

Sanya gives up on all her dreams because of her absentee father and Sahir never dares to see dreams of his own because of how oppressive his abusive father’s presence is in his life. Their relationship with each other isn't sustainable either (though they have been ‘sustaining’ it for years). They break up, wear a shirt that is the flagbearer of ‘graphic design is my passion’, and make up at least twice in the film itself. 

This is where I must reveal that it's actually a love quadrangle – Raghav falls for Riya (Naila Grrewal). Most of what we know about her is that she loves the environment and doesn't love the unhealthy attachment Raghav has to his friends. So far, easily the smartest character in the film. 

Things get complicated when Raghav and Sanya fall for each other. After that, the makers let the film go into freefall – a dog is almost stolen, Raghav spends 2 minutes in a forest before concluding that he's going to perish there, Sanya drags them to the worst Halloween party possible. 

At some point, it becomes glaringly obvious that the romances in the film are this flimsy because they're supposed to be how ‘GenZ’ deals with relationships. That doesn't, however, explain why the film lacks basic emotional intelligence. It's an outsider's perspective into a whole generation; that should explain a lot. You almost expect someone to say, “Ye Gen Z toh apna hi language bana lete hain.” 

But for that the dialogues would've had to actually reflect Gen Z lingo but they don't. How does nobody bring up the obvious notes of ‘situationship’ across the film? I have renewed respect for Kho Gaye Hum Kahan. 

Rohit Saraf is trying his level-best to recreate his Mismatched charm and despite everything working against him, he does manage to -- even though his dialogues make him sound annoying, his earnesty and appeal make up for it. Grrewal managers to hold her own despite having the least sketched-out character of the lot (the other aren’t far behind).

With the total two shades that her character is given, Grrewal claws out a character worth rooting for. Khan’s performance needed much more nuance than the actor affords to it but his performance hints at an actor with potential.

Pashmina Roshan’s performance is inconsistent – when you believe she's doing a good job, she flips and doesn't and when you're prepared to write her off, she ends up performing a scene well.

For a film like this to work, the ‘chemistry’ needs to work. To their credit, Saraf and Roshan are able to create enough chemistry for their ‘relationship’ to be believable – they seem so at comfort with each other that the friends-to-lovers trope does drag you in.

All of the grace I summon while I look at some of the performances on screen is trashed when actors like Supriya Pilgaonkar enter the stage. Her performance is so affective that Roshan’s performance is elevated a notch when they’re sharing the screen – an opportunity to actually explore the intergenerational bond between the two women is squandered.

Think about the narrative arcs you could mine from the relationship between a single mother and a daughter who is nursing a broken heart. You want a common point that is not “daddy issues”? There’s your story!

There are often places where the film tricks you into believing that it will do something more – it will actually grab the opportunity to make the story bigger and better than what it is but it doesn’t happen. That being said, Ishq Vishk Rebound is not a horrible movie – it has some of its better moments. There are times when the dialogues get an unexpected laugh out of you even as they remind you how inconsistent the writing has been.

The songs, even though not memorable, are enough to get you tapping your feet to the rhythm (that doesn’t intentionally sound like a Katy Perry lyric I promise you). The camerawork, however, uses way too many close-ups, all the time. It’s one of the reasons why the ‘design’ becomes very obvious – you can almost see the filmmaking happen which isn’t the best look for this particular film.

Towards the end, a single cameo from Sheeba Chadha floors you – in a few minutes, she reminds you of how natural an actor can look on screen. It’s like watching your ‘ishq vishk’ for cinema come back in real time.

Rating: 2 Quints out of 5

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