Always Kabhi Kabhi is a teen film, from Shahrukh Khan’s banner which had a huge potential to be exciting and entertaining high school rom-com, but doesn’t live up to expectations.
The story of Always Kabhi Kabhi is about a gang of four teen aged friends during the last year of their school life. It is about parental pressure, the neglected kids, the misunderstandings, school bunking and extra curricular activities and the first stirrings of love and heartbreak. This particular school allows its girls students to wear teeny-weeny skirts and those dresses which usually aren’t allowed or even seen in top grade Mumbai schools or even colleges.
It is St. Marks School in Delhi, and being the last year in school, it’s a time for a group of friends to grow up, move on, and experience first love.
The school’s bad girl is Nandini (Zoa Morani) who feels left out by her working parents, the lovely sweet-natured Aishwarya Dhawan (Giselli Monteiro) is being forced into modeling and stardom by her mother as she wants her daughter to be an international ‘super’star. Tariq Naqvi (Satyajeet Dubey) who is expected to excel at ‘everything’ and then he is under pressure from his father to join MIT, well he is hardworking and intelligent too, and then we have Sameer Khanna (Ali Faisal) the cool guy who has a very strict dad.
As the school prepares to take part in the inter-school Shakespearewallah contest with a production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, these friends face a series of incidents which changes their lives forever.
Sam falls head over heels in love with Aishwarya and tries to win her through the play they are rehearsing.
The film is about how in the last year of their school they experience the true worth of friendship, love and learn to face difficult situations that their young minds face. So they turn the play Romeo and Juliet into their own version where they get an opportunity to air with angry outburst about their problems.
The present day students are so calculative and possessive about their career that they do not indulge in such sentimental stuff, which could have passed in the 1980s and 90s. Always Kabhi Kabhi has nothing new to offer, except that it launches the talented bunch of newcomers.
It is director Roshan Abbas debut with Always Kabhi Kabhi but he has failed in picking up the right script leaving a lot to be desired. He has tried hard to depict youthfulness and trendy feeling with social networking sites, hacking, short forms etc. which is short cut names and words thrown in, but the script drifts aimlessly.
Ali Fazal looks confident and puts up a good performance. The beautiful Zoa Morani has a great potential. Giselle is talented. But it is Satyajeet Dubey who is extremely cute and very lovable in his part.
Cast of Always Kabhi Kabhi:
Ali Fazal as Sameer “Sam” Khanna
Giselli Monteiro as Aishwarya Dhawan
Zoa Morani as Nandini
Satyajeet Dubey as Tariq Naqvi
Satish Shah
Lilette Dubey as Ms. Das
Vijay Raaz as Professor Agarwal a.k.a. Agro
Mukesh Tiwari
Manoj Joshi
Navneet Nishan as Mrs. Dhawan
Ashwin Mushran as Rahul Ghosh
Shahrukh Khan in Special Appearance in song “Antenna”
Credits & Crew of Always Kabhi Kabhi:
Director – Roshan Abbas
Producer – Gauri Khan
Writer Roshan Abbas, Ranjit Raina
Screenplay – Ishita Moitra
Story – Ranjit Raina
Lyrics Roshan Abbas, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Prashant Pandey, Irfan Siddique
Music – Aashish Rego, Shree D., Pritam Chakraborty
Distributed by Red Chillies Entertainment, Eros Entertainment
Always Kabhi Kabhi – movie review