‘Loveyapa’ review: A faithful, mechanical remake of ‘Love Today’

When a lovey-dovey couple swaps cellphones as a pre-condition for marriage, chaos breaks out in their virtual and real lives. Gaurav and Baani think they know everything there is to know about each other. A game played by Baani’s father Atul exposes the Gen-Z pair’s mutual ignorance, false expectations and inadequate crisis management skills.

Atul (Ashutosh Rana) puts Gaurav (Junaid Khan) and Baani (Khushi Kapoor) through what he calls a trust test. Exchange your personal instruments for 24 hours, access each other’s messages and videos, and see if you still want to be with each other, he tells his daughter and her boyfriend.

If they fail the test, Atul will marry Baani off to someone he has in mind. More than the uncomfortable secrets unearthed by Gaurav and Baani, it is Atul’s breathtakingly casual cruelty towards his own daughter that stands out in Loveyapa.

But Advait Chandan’s Loveyapa isn’t about the patriarch who gleefully behaves like an evil puppeteer, yanking the strings of vulnerable 24 year olds. Apart from the skeletons that are unearthed in the excavation of browsing history, there’s a sub-plot about the nuptials of Gaurav’s sister Kiran (Tanvika Parlikar) and Anupam (Kiku Sharda).

Anupam too is sucked into a phone exchange exercise, which proves just…

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