When I saw this film for the first time, It had no special impact over me. It felt like any other rom com. For some reason I saw it again a year later and at that time I was going through some personal crisis myself, the whole movie's perception changed! The movie is entirely revolving around its characters and there is no story as such, maybe that's why it failed at box office. Its not about searching the ring, its about harry and sejal searching each other, Harry is a middle aged tour guide, lonely and somewhat depressed with his life and his habbits. He ran away from his home to pursue his dream of becoming singer but couldn't become one. His failures has made him bitter towards the world and himself and is lonely. He finds solace in sex and girls but deep inside he is kind hearted as well. Sejal on the other hand is a girl with serious self worth issues. A typical indian girl with overprotective family and someone who has never done things on her own maybe. She seeks freedom and validation in life to do whatever she wants, to realise her worth. Can you see the beauty of the plot? The tagline of the movie is "What you seek seeking you". Sejal wants the freedom that harry has. Harry wants to feel loved and cared again without being judged for his habbits and past. They both are seeking each other subconsciously. The ring is mere a tool or a metaphor used for both the characters looking for each other. The way both of the characters unfold each other is beautiful and its somewhat like an european cinema. The direction is typical imtiaz ali, beautiful locations, lost characters, funny setup. The songs and their use in the movie is perfect, cinematography is beautiful. SRK is perfect for a middle aged harry and so is anushka, a childish girl. Don't go for reviews, watch it to understand what a rare gem it is, for those who relate with this movie is gonna love it, for those who don't is gonna hate it for sure!

I noticed a major problem when I looked at reviews on IMDB about this movie before I started watching it. There were TONS of one and two sentence reviews that either gave it a 1 or a 10....and in both cases they really DON'T explain why they felt that way about the film at all. They either say it is garbage or one of the best films ever! With such reviews, it makes it hard to determine anything about the movie...so I just had to see it for myself as I found many of the reviews to be mostly useless. I sure long for the days when IMDB used to require reviews be at least 10 lines in order to get posted!! I also wonder how honest these reviews are when so little effort was made in writing them.

I must admit that the film started off VERY badly for me. After all, it's a rom-com and you know by the end of the movie that the pair will fall in love....so why did they make the female lead so incredibly easy to hate. Sejal (Anushka Sharma) comes off as an incredibly spoiled, entitled and thoughtless 'lady'....one who simply thinks most people are beneath her and money solves everything. In fact, she so much as says this! How can a movie recover from such writing? And, who would root for them to get together by the end of the story?

Harry (SRK) is a tour guide who works in Europe and apparently he specializes in working with groups of Indians. Well, after working with one tour group for a month, he is happy to have gotten them on the airplane home and it's time to relax. However, he's shocked when as he's leaving the airport, one of them comes running out looking for him....and missing her airplane because of this. It seems that Sejal lost her engagement ring and is heartbroken...which is very understandable. However HOW she acts is simply unacceptable. Instead of asking Harry for help, she demands he drop everything and take her all over the Netherlands looking for the accursed ring. She never says please or thank you and then insists that since she's rich, that means he MUST help her! Even when he says a white lie that he has another tour group to meet up with (understandable in this situation),she tells him to blow them off and help her because...well...she's apparently better than everyone else. She then threatens to give him a negative review in order to get him fired in order to get him to cooperate. How can a film recover from this? And, more importantly, how can a movie be romantic when the woman is beneath contempt?!

I've seen Khan himself play similar roles...such as the obnoxious playboy who thinks he's adorable and so he essentially annoys a woman until she inevitably falls for him. This must be a popular Indian trope as I've seen it quite often. So, obviously some folks often accept this as a plot device (after all, no one is more popular in Indian movies today than SRK)...but if you aren't Indian, it might seem really odd. I am used to rooting for nice people to fall in love in rom-coms and caring about them...and I have a hard time when they aren't nice. I don't think I'm alone here. It's a major strike against the movie.

So did the film get any better and is it worth seeing despite some poor writing? Eventually, yes....but not after more impossible to believe antics from Sejal. In a very annoying scene filmed in Prague, a creep bothers Sejal in a club and she rightfully fights back. However, when Harry rescues her and they run and hide from the creep and his gang of violent friends, she is insufferable. At one point, while they are hiding, she yells out to reveal where they are!!! Why? I DON'T KNOW!!! Then, after they somehow manage to escape again, she starts sobbing loudly and keeps crying...again, possibly alerting the bad guys where they are! If that had happened in real life, I could only imagine Harry tossing her in the river and running away in order to save himself!! But then, after this, they start to have romantic feelings towards each other! Have I missed something here?! No...it seems that the transition from brat to romantic lead is NOT going to be an easy one in this film.

I noticed some complain about how old SRK is compared to his female leading lady. Well, perhaps this is a mistake and giving him a more mature woman would have helped. But to me, this is such a minor concern compared to how godawful they made Sejal that it's not all that important and missed the film's HUGE problem. Plus, for a man in his 50s, Khan does look amazing. With all the lovely location shoots and nice music, the film really had to work hard to alienate me THIS much...but by the end I simply was not on 'Team Sejal'...I still disliked her and think the writers are almost entirely to blame for many of the negative reviews. Although, on the other hand, the actors could have simply refused to make it after they read the script...which they clearly should have done...or at least demanded a re-write.

Shah Rukh Khan is a tour guide for Indians visiting a rather Disney-fied Europe. He hates tourists, particularly Anushka Sharma, who has lost her heirloom engagement ring and insists that Mr. Khan help her find it before she returns to her upper-class life as a lawyer back home. This leads them in a tour of some beautiful locations in Europe: Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest and Lisbon. They start out with solid anger for each other, of course.

The subtext in this solid romantic comedy examines the fantasy of strangers from different parts of society building a lasting relationship, and makes use of the colorful musical interludes to chart this. The first doesn't occur until a third of the way through the movie. They become more frequent and elaborate, carrying the characters' along with them, while the bouts of (rather depressive) reality become shorter and sharper.

Will the end be fantasy or bitter-sweet submission to reality? I know that i have seen a lot of romcoms which have impelled me to remark as I left the theater, "I give them six weeks."