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Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara Movie Review

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is a 2011 Indian romantic comedy drama film directed by Zoya Akhtar and starring Hrithik Roshan, Abhay Deol and Farhan Akhtar. It’s such an endearing flick.

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“A person should remain in a box only once he is dead“

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Friends Kabir, Imran and Arjun take a vacation in Spain before Kabir’s marriage. The trip turns into an opportunity to mend fences, heal wounds, fall in love with life and combat their worst fears. This is such a wonderful movie about male friendship, the type of story that Hollywood used to make all the time back in the day, but are now sorely missing in that industry. But we have Bollywood to thank for giving us a genuinely well made and effective crowd-pleaser.

As is the case with most Bollywood movies, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (translated as You Only Live Once in English) is pretty much a genre-bender where at least four different genres are mixed together into a surprisingly coherent whole. Unlike most Hindi films, however, this one has a shorter supply of musical numbers to offer.

There are “just” seven songs interspersed throughout its two and a half hour runtime and most of them were actually terrific. The soundtrack is a clever, unique mix of more European (especially Spanish) and Indian styles. The highlights are the wonderfully catchy and fun Paint It Red as well as the culturally authentic and beautifully choreographed Senorita. It’s such a classic soundtrack that is still very modern too.

Above all else, this is a road trip movie, one that has buddy comedy elements to it as well as two significant romantic subplots. It’s also very much a travelogue that is a beautiful love letter to the country of Spain. Some may argue that it promotes tourism way too much, but I found it to be very well done regardless. It’s not wrong to promote a country that is as beautiful as Spain. I loved those road elements as the three men grew even closer together while confronting their fears and insecurities.

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The movie benefits from superb performances from its very talented and charismatic cast. Hrithik Roshan is wonderful in the role of Arjun. He is the best-looking part of the trio, but a man who learns to let go of his fears and workaholic attitude to find a bigger meaning in life. Through his character, the movie showcased the importance of living your life to the fullest and the dangers of pursuing money and careers above all else. The film is very individualistic.

Farhan Akhtar is excellent as the funny, charismatic, but insecure Imran. His family drama is so well done. We’ve seen this trope of going to find your biological father before many times, but here the film had a more believable twist that this ended poorly for the guy, which I really appreciated. Kabir is also a very well realized character. Abhay Deol is so memorable in the role and both of them are very funny, especially together. His arc with his fiancé is definitely very familiar, but it’s so well approached and so moving that it transcended that familiarity. The female characters are also surprisingly well developed and genuinely memorable.

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is definitely not original in its plot. We’ve seen all of these issues and arcs depicted before, but the movie did such a good job in the areas of characterization, dialogue and emotional resonance that it made the story work. I was engaged from start to finish in spite of its staggering length. The directing from Zoya Akhtar is absolutely phenomenal and she infused the film with so much warmth, heart and polish. The cinematography is fantastic as the movie looked sumptuous and expensive throughout. I appreciated its smaller character moments, the activities that they embarked on (especially diving and sky diving) and instances of phenomenal humor. How they teased each other lovingly and childishly always made smile and at times laugh out loud. It’s a film that is both masculine and tender in feel. It has that summer holiday feel to it – a time when we let loose and become different people while learning new things about ourselves and about the world.

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