After a spectacular start with Pyaar Ka Punchnama Kartik Aaryan’s career dipped when films like Subhash Ghai’s Kaanchi and Ashwin Chowdhary Guest In London proved cold turkeys. But thereafter, Kartik saw only success, and nothing could keep him down. Here are the five finest from Kartik Aaryan.
1. Pyaar Ka Punchnama (2011):
Playing Rajat, a.k.a Rajjo, Kartik’s stole the show from his co-stars Divyendu Sharma and Raayo S. Bakhirta, who unfortunately got left far behind as Kartik’s Rajjo caught the nation’s attention. It was a performance that youngsters connected with, of a guy totally dominated by his girlfriend to the point of asphyxiation. The role and, the character and his relationship with his girlfriend reminded me of a certain actor who is no more with us and whose live-in similarly smothered him.
2. Akaash Vaani (2013):
In one of the film’s high dramatic moments shot on a small deserted railway station in the night, the film’s protagonists, Kartik and Nushrat Bharucha, now estranged by an unfortunate series of circumstances, sit on the bench and…well, they sob. Yes, they simply cry their hearts out. First, the girl. Then, in a melancholic celebration of the me-too syndrome, the boy, now alas no longer a boy (and he smokes to prove it), also breaks into little sobs that build up into a wail as the shehnai, indicative of a cruel marital joke, plays in the background. Though the film belongs to the female protagonist, Kartik Aaryan manages to hold his own with a sensitive, empathetic performance far removed from what he attempted in the director’s Pyaar Ka Punchnama. Someone should cast him as a modern-day Devdas.
3. Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 (2015):
Luv Ranjan’s follow-up to his 2011 sleeper hit again succeeded without the props. Ranjan used relatively new but talented actors to address that age-old question: what do women want? Surprisingly, even women loved this seemingly misogynist film with no Khans in the lead. The script and Kartik Aaryan were clearly the rock stars of the show. Kartik Aaryan’s ‘penis monologue’ (as opposed to Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues) comes on full-throttle. By the time he bursts into his phallic harangue, we are so bloody hooked to the very familiar, very mortifying, and yet very comforting love life of our three protagonists that we are positively rooting for the underdogs—big applause for the male victims of gender inequality. I came away with a huge chuckle and a deep sigh from the film and with images of Kartik Aaryan’s ‘love dance’ with his deceiving girlfriend and her two sahelis. As Aaryan twirled and pirouetted with the ladies, he seemed to be tokenizing the Great Modern Urban Tragedy.
4. Luka Chuppi (2019):
Kartik’s Guddu Shukla trying desperately to hide his live-in relationship with his girlfriend, was a laugh riot. Displaying a comic talent far ahead of all the other contemporary actors, Kartik stole the show, low lock stock, and barrell. Kartik’s Guddu was endearingly guileless and eager to score. There are no kisses between Kartik Aryan and Kriti Sanon in this film. And yet they communicate a warm, easygoing alliance that comes not from singing songs together but from recognizing your life partner for who she is. Most of the humour is generated organically and without making strenuous efforts to induce humour into social statement. Make no mistake about it. Luka Chuppi is a comedy with an underlying layer of dark satire and a social statement on moral policing and communal biases in small towns.
5. Chandu Champion (2024):
A committed performance by Kartik Aaryan could not make this commendable Kabir Khan helmed biopic the big success that it deserved to be. Never mind! Kartik can show his unborn kids the film to prove what Daddy could do when Daddy was driven and inspired. The performance and the film were subdued and straightforward, with no punches pulled and no gimmicks. Kabir Khan had to tell the story of the Murlikant Patkar, and he did so with far less style and more substance than he did the story of Kapil Dev in 83.
