Love In Tokyo (1966) :
Brief Review -
The best chapter in Joy Mukherjee's "Love In" franchise? I guess so. Love In Tokyo is a very colourful and glamorous movie for its time. By the 60s, many Bollywood movies had been shot overseas, so it wasn't anything new of its kind. In the film, Ashok is sent to Tokyo to get his nephew, and he falls in love with an Indian girl he sees on TV. The girl, Asha, runs away from home, and here, Ashok's nephew also runs away from him, and these two beautiful fugitives catch up with each other and become friends. Asha transforms herself into a male sardarji and lives with Ashok and his nephew. In the meantime, she also falls and love with Ashok, and teases him with those impersonations. The tale has a twist when Ashok's mother arrives in Tokyo and rejects Asha, who is forcefully taken by her uncle to marry a greedy villain for the sake of her property. Simultaneously, we have a fun-filled love story between Mehmood and Shobha Khote, which was there only to make you laugh, and it does. Mehmood mimics Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor in one single scene, and the next moment he recreates Raj Kapoor's iconic song from Sangam, "Mere Mann Ki Ganga." Absolute fun! Joy Mukherjee and Asha Parekh's chemistry set in beautiful locations in Tokyo is definitely eye-pleasing. While most of the songs fall in the mid-range, Sayonara (in Lata Di's voice) has become a cult, and deservingly so. Script-wise, Love In Tokyo looked formulaic yet entertaining but got a little messy and rushy in the last 20 minutes. Though it is set in Tokyo, the Indian drama is hardly affected by the surroundings. That hospital scene when Asha is all in to give her eyes away for Ashok works as an eye-opening scene for Ashok's mother, but look, it has been dramatised-the way the doctor explains it. Overall, slightly below Ziddi (1964), but a fine romantic comedy drama by Pramod Chakravorty.
RATING - 6.5/10*
By - #samthebestest.
