Chand Mera Dil Movie Review: Lakshya-Ananya starrer is brimming with empty tears and emptier melodrama

There is a sense of rush and haste in the first half of Vivek Soni’s Moon My Heart, and it almost makes sense. Just like the viewer, the protagonists too find themselves navigating a life and set of circumstances they weren’t prepared for. There is no room for any emotion to settle down — the two lovers are compelled to deal with everything that comes their way, and it feels about right. If this was a film entirely about a failed relationship, it would have made sense. But Moon My Heart is not really sure what it wants to be – and this is only the beginning of where things start to go wrong.

The film tells the story of Aarav (Lakshya) and Chandni (Ananya Panday), two engineering students who instinctively fall for each other. It feels like an intense, early adolescent romance at first, but soon the two lovers end up committing to more than they had anticipated. For a while, Chand Mera Dil promises to settle into a story about a failed relationship that’s equal parts messy and discomforting. However, the film is undone by its utterly ineffectual writing and complete unwillingness to push the boundary.

Cast: Ananya Panday, Lakshya, Paresh Pahuja, Manish Chaudhary, Richa Shankar

Director: Vivek Soni

Romance remains a genre where bringing originality remains a unique beast to battle. It’s also a genre where lensing could become a gateway for bringing in something unique. Moon My Heart doesn’t try. While we are promised a story about two lovers who grow apart, the film remains unevenly obsessed with Aarav’s trajectory. Like most filmmakers in the past who prioritised a hero figure’s agony and angst, the writers here too give undue screen-time to Aarav’s moments of outburst. Chandni’s perspective, meanwhile, is left a mystery, something to be discovered by the protagonist and work as a plot-twist for the audience, almost as if it’s not worthy of a deep exploration. The title alludes to a tilted perspective — where we remain on one side, looking at the other from a distance.