Noor the film is as mixed up as its female protagonist of the same name: it gets some things right and the others horribly wrong. First, the good stuff. What a delight to see a woman fronting a film, even if Noor’s (Sonakshi Sinha) character is somewhat of a young Bridget Jones template: she peers at a bag of chips as if were an enemy (right, she’s got weight issues); she hangs out with a guy (Kanan Gill) she’s known for ever, back-slapping him (of course, the realization that he’s something more will dawn at an appropriately late stage); she has no compunction about making moves on an attractive available male (Purab Kohli) even as she voices anxieties about the state of her love life, or the lack thereof; and so on.
There has been a sudden flurry of female characters in Bollywood, who are pleasingly fleshed out, and who are allowed to have thoughts in their head. But because it’s so difficult to get such films out there, it still feels like a victory to have a Noor as a full-fledged, owning-the-screen character, muddling along in the best chick-flick based on chick-lit tradition (Noor is adapted from the mostly sparkly ‘Karachi You’re Killing Me’), looking for The One.