Cast: Arjun Rampal,
Farhan Akhtar, Shraddha Kapoor, Purab Kohli.

Direction: Shujaat
Saudagar

Production: Farhan
Akhtar, Ritesh Sidhwani

Rock On 2

Our last meet with Aditya, Joe, Kedar and Rob – members of
the rock band Magik, showed them heading for fame and fortune, having overcome
monetary, professional and mid-life crises. Since then, Rob, on his deathbed at
the end of Rock On!! has passed, though Luke Kenny makes an appearance in a
flashback, his locks greying yet worthy of some sort of hair-shimmer award.

Joe (Arjun Rampal) has given up music to become a reality
show judge and the owner of a swanky club. Aditya (Farhan Akhtar), haunted by
the suicide of a fan, has decamped to Meghalaya, while Kedar (Purab Kohli)
still goes by KD, a.k.a ‘Killer Drummer’.

Had Rock On 2 rehashed the 2008 Rock On!!, giving us another
variation on good-looking, well-to-do people bemoaning life passing them by-it
would have been trying.

But director Shujaat Saudagar and writers Abhishek Kapoor
and Pubali Chaudhuri have a new hook: altruism. The film opens in the
Meghalayan ranges, where Aditya has helped the local farmers form a cooperative
and start a school. New settings in Bollywood films look good on screen, with
idyllic valleys and lakes, but the concept that takes a big-city musician
running from his demons to organise workers comes across as fairly patronising.

Aditya’s social work is held off when singer Jiah (Shraddha
Kapoor) enters the picture. A daughter of a disapproving classical musician
(Kumud Mishra), Jiah, just like Aditya, suffers from some trauma, source of
which film reveals very slowly.

Like its prequel, the best thing about Rock On 2 is that
it’s a professional job. The storytelling is straightforward, and just in case
anyone’s having the slightest difficulty understanding what’s going on, there’s
KD’s voice-over. The writing is stolid, full of unmusical truths like “Move on
kehna aasaan hai, karna mushkil hai”. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy blend catchy pop-rock
tracks.

With Akhtar and Rampal doing strong-men-in-agony routines,
it’s left to Kohli to infuse some fun, which he readily does, even though
looking silly at times. Shashank Arora is intriguing as an ambitious ‘shudhh’
Hindi-speaking semi-classical musician who joins Magik, but it’s an
underwritten part. Kapoor does her own singing pretty well, as the
hoarse-voiced Akhtar.

What is perhaps most surprising is that a film about
musicians has nothing insightful to tell us about how music is made. We come in
wanting to experience a story of a band that symbolised breaking free and
delivering some great tunes, but unfortunately most of the songs seem
situational but don’t manage to stay with us till the end of the film. Over
all, Rock On 2 showcases some good performances, but it doesn’t quite recreate
the youthful simplicity of the first part.

ex-Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School