Behold, the gurus of the road side Romeos, the disease faking psychotic rich girls and the photoshopped Bill Gates: Mohit Suri & Chetan Bhagat. The term friendzone was not enough, that Chetan Bhagat created another term for us, small town guys, who do not realize that dating does not usually include staring incessantly at girls playing basketball in sports bra. Half-Girlfriend is the movie out for us.
We, the testosterone-fuelled young men from small towns of Bihar in Chetan Bhagat world have one objective only, to fall in love with the girl hands down, without any reflection from the girl. But Chetan Bhagat deals the epidemic of girls becoming “dost se zyada but girlfriend se kam”, quite maturely: the guy brings that girl to his room as instructed “naam roshan kar”, the girl realizes his horniness (in the novel she realizes this under the covers) and the guy pushes her, she falls and hits her head. All Bihari men do this on a regular basis, but only when we aren’t busy dancing to “Lagavelu jab lipistick”. But, Biharis shouldn’t be known for bad English only, for we are nationalistic social workers. (But we won’t talk about the last election, sorry.) This is our story.
When Arjun Kapoor (Madhav Jha) meets Shraddha Kapoor (Riya Somani), (by meeting I mean he eyes her non-stop), he is asked to show off his basketball skills, a game most popular among the non-English type Bihari guys from Simraon. He befriends her, not realizing the gentleman’s rule of not getting into the friendzone.
To get out of the zone, he first asks her the old “Lagte kya hain hum tumhare” which she dodges by becoming her half girlfriend, which is something no one other than Chetan Bhagat could fully understand.
Madhav then forces himself upon her like an Indian husband attempting marital rape, and could only think of a polished version of “deti hai to de warna kat le!” before hitting her.
Riya has a broken family and wants to become a singer in New York for some reason (why would you! Do you not remember Phoebe?) She decides that marrying off to a rich guy might potentially help her cause. Madhav returns to Bihar.
Years later they meet again (just luckily run into each other), when Madhav is busy being a nationalistic social worker, and Riya is single all over again for him. She is there to give him English tuitions, for he has to present himself in front of photoshopped Bill Gates to get some funds. He eventually delivers the presentation in Hindi, and CGI Bill Gates is impressed nonetheless. He receives the funds as well as an internship with the United Nations, again, for some reason.
Meanwhile, Madhav’s mom (played by Seema Biswas) disapproves Madhav’s potential marriage with a divorcee. So instead of sitting down and talking about the problems (talking hasn’t helped anyone, right?), Riya decides to fake blood cancer and goes to NY to live her dream of being a struggling bar singer for some reason. He eventually ends up in New York, the city where the TV is on the streets and a low angle pan shot to let us know this. He finds her, and then they live happily ever after. He doesn’t confront her about faking blood cancer either, because that’s a perfectly normal thing to do, right? RIGHT?
But the point is she loves him, and loved him all along, even when she conveyed him, a guy madly in love, that she would die in a few days, just to go to NY to sing. But, if the Bihari guy still has not been able to confront her about this, then probably, he is equally psychotic, and possibly deserve each other as well as his state government. Now, he can finally go ahead and complete his original aim of “naam roshan karna”.
The movie generalises a lot of things, and clearly paints a very bad picture of Bihar, and Bihari guys, even after lecturing a lot on Bihar’s past achievements. That’s not the fault of the movie, but the novel it’s based upon. The songs are forgettable but still better than the other aspects of the movie, the acting is terrible, accents are further terrible, with an exception of Vikrant Massey who had an incredible Bihari accent. Dialogues are outright BAD, but what can be expected from the English novel which has this dialogue “Deti hai toh de, warna kat le”. It’s amazing the movie rights of the book was sold prior to its original release. The second half drags on and on, very similar to the third act of the novel. This movie is so terrible, that it in fact made a few people say, that the novel was better. Just go watch Hindi Medium instead. Or Baahubali 2 again.