The highlight of the film is Alia Bhatt, who pulls off her second brilliant performance of the year after “Udta Punjab”. The focus is entirely on her and she doesn’t shy away, facing even tough scenes with a natural confidence and maturity that belies her age. “Dear Zindagi” might not be a love letter to life it was intended to be, but Bhatt and Khan make this one worth watching.

If you are bored of those generic Bollywood films with item numbers and over-the-top action sequences and are looking for an honest and heartfelt film that will give you something to take back home, Dear Zindagi is a delightful watch you cannot miss. Plus, it has SRK in a never-seen-before avatar.

Shah Rukh Khan bears down with starry charm on the role of Jug, but his mountaineer anecdote just can’t compare with his co-star talking about herself in disguised third person earlier in the scene. Bhatt has a rare ability to make the emotional decisions of her characters look as if they spontaneously occurred to her. In other words, she gives the impression she’s winging it, which makes even the most ordinary scenes she’s in terribly exciting.

We have seen Imtiaz Ali and Aamir Khan deal with the same topic in Tamasha and Taare Zameen Par, but Gauri Shinde gives it her signature and links it rather well with romance. It’s painfully slow but has some beautiful moments. Definitely makes for a good one-time watch! 

Dear Zindagi has the longest prelude in recent memory – endless soft-focus montages, friendly banter, and lovable close-ups and fly-on-the-wall footage of the magnificent Alia Bhatt as a romantically confused cinematographer, all of which seem to be adding up to something vague or nothing at all.