Jhootha Hi Sahi - Movie Review

Many are the ways in which love stories can be told. Some - like Karan Johar - tell it with flourish, using extraordinary situations to tell a pretty ordinary tale and propping it up with generous jabs of melodrama, tear-shedding moments and, of course, many a musical crescendo to boot. Others - like Abbas Tyrewala - prefer the gentle thrum of a brewing romance to an out-and-out eruption of love. Jhootha Hi Sahi, Tyrewala’s second directorial attempt and his wife Pakhi’s first shot at scriptwriting and acting, is a pleasing drift from Bollywood staple. It’s like a lulling boat ride on the sleeping Thames, with A R Rahman’s lilting melodies warbling in the background.

John Abraham plays a bespectacled, bumbling geek Siddharth aka Sid, whose phone number is mistakenly printed on the brochure of a suicide helpline in London. Thanks to this mix-up, every night Sid is flooded with calls from guys waiting and wanting to jump from windows or pumping down a bottle of sleeping pills. Sid tries to dissuade them from doing so.

One night he gets a call from a girl Mishka (Pakhi) who’s on the verge of ending her life after a bitter break-up with boyfriend (Madhavan). Sid persuades her to hang on to life and slowly a friendship brews between the two.

Trouble begins when Sid lies about himself and tells her that he’s an adventurous guy who has scaled mountains, plumbed deep seas and what not, while in reality he’s only seen it on National Geographic, that too in half sleep.

The real Sid is a wimp, who stammers, and cowers into a corner when faced with Mishka. So, should he reveal his true identity to her? Or should he play the double role - one as a phone friend in whom Mishka confides and the other as the bumbling Sid whom she grudgingly likes - all this without letting her know that both are the same person?