I can’t profess a great deal of affection for 2008’s Rock On!!. The film, written and directed by Abhishek Kapoor, had centred on four young friends, each with their own troubles–whether to do with authoritarian parents, a tumultuous romantic relationship, problems with money or, well, brain tumor, as it turned out in one case–but who find solace in making music together. The story had been decent enough, but it was the smug quasi-philosophical tone that put me off, a sense that the film was taking its premise far too seriously than warranted. But now that the sequel, Rock On 2, is out, directed this time around by newbie Shujaat Saudagar, it’s actually making me recall the previous film with a degree of nostalgic fondness I didn’t think myself capable of. That’s because whatever the issues with that film–the posturing, the relentless pseudo-profound blathering and the soap-operaish portrayal of the inner workings of a band–they’re all repeated and amplified in the new one. The narrative is far more contrived, far more inclined to emotional manipulation, sub-plots are introduced that are unconvincing and downright distasteful at some junctures, and to top it all off, the music itself has fallen a couple of notches compared to the original–which, you know, for a film about musicians, is a tad unfortunate.

In the years since we last saw them, we learn that the members of the none-too-inventively-named Magik (minus Rob, who is dead, but barely remembered), despite having inexplicably peaked in popularity, have disbanded yet again. Except this time, they’re not exactly feuding, they’ve just drifted apart: resident jester Kedar or KD (short for “Killer Drummer”, don’t you know, played by Purab Kohli) now makes soul-crushing commercial jingles for a living; guitarist Joe (Arjun Rampal) has been raking in the big bucks, now the owner of a fancy club and a judge on one of those Idol-type reality TV shows, although, of course, he does feel the occasional twinge of sell-out remorse; and lead singer Adi (Farhan Akhtar), well, he’s gone the most off track. Traumatised by an incident involving a fan, Adi has called it quits with music, exiling himself to a little village in Meghalaya, where he presently runs a small school and a farmers’ cooperative. And mopes, every bloody chance he gets. 

He’s about to have company, though. Somewhere in Mumbai is Jiah (Shradha Kapoor), an aspiring singer-songwriter, whose super-famous classical musician father aka Anti-Fusion Man (Kumud Mishra) simply won’t abide by the kind of modern music she wants to make (his diatribes on the purity of “sangeet” comprise some of the film’s most unintentionally hilarious moments). By some convenient contrivance or the other, she comes into contact with our protagonists, but while Jiah is clearly talented, her father’s disapproval and a tragic event from her past is holding her back from really going for it. Both she and Adi must thus battle their demons within and without, find their voices, so to speak, as we head into a protracted climax where the stakes are higher than ever.

Having spent a good part of our lives watching Bollywood stars mouth songs performed by playback singers–chances are, 80 percent of the time it would have been Udit Narayan or Sonu Nigam–you do admire a film where the cast is committed to doing their own singing (or in Rampal’s case, learning to play the guitar so he can at least look the part on stage). What isn’t so impressive, though, are the songs themselves, particularly as rendered by Akhtar. Although it’s clear that the actor loves doing this, and try as he might to compensate with on-stage theatrics, the fact remains that he has a very, very limited range, and his underwhelming vocals are part of the reason why it’s so difficult to buy Magik’s appeal with the masses–they’re shown playing to packed arenas with frenzied crowds, but the reverence feels largely undeserved given the mediocrity of the actual performances. Kapoor fares much better, though she’s not given too many opportunities to show off her skills. But, of course, it’s not all about the singers: Shankar-Ehsan-Loy, who also scored the previous installment–where there were couple of songs that were at least catchy–have just plain dropped the ball with this one, serving up no memorable tracks.  

There’s also that whole deep-sounding but ultimately superficial philosophical bentthat had made the last film feel so pretentious, but has been jacked up even more on this one. Characters here seem more interested in talking about the pros and cons of making music, than actually actively making any music, orgiving us any interesting insights into what the process might be like. No, all we get are prolonged discussions on the tussle between passion and pragmatism, belaboured to the point of tediousness–every so often there’s a lofty conversation about what music means, and the more it goes on, the more inauthentic it all starts to sound. Particularly since Saudagar, as well as Akhtar–who co-produced and wrote dialogues for the film–seem all-too-enamoured with the clichéd trappings of the “tortured artist”image as represented by Adi: facial hair grown just so, scruffy notebook in hand that he scratches in during broody evenings spent by candlelight. But there isn’t much under that surface, no real digging into his psyche, or that of the others. And the smug voiceover by Kohli’s character that runs through the film–a device meant to give it a more weighty, literary feel–only serves to drive that hollowness home. The acting doesn’t do much by way of redemption either, with onlyKapoor shines in a few scenes, the rest practically sleepwalking through.

What really does it for me, though, is the ill-advised sub-plot set in the northeast–for a start, it’s not clear why Adi chose this particular spot to retreat to. Does he have history here? Was it simply the scenery? Or was it the proximity to a place that has gained the rather overused moniker of “Rock Capital of India”—which would be a bit bizarre, since wasn’t the whole point of the move to get away from music? Besides which, by peddling the concept of a headbanded city-slicker coming to the rescue of hapless villagers–not just a ridiculously dated premise in itself but especially problematic given the real-life complexities in the social and political relationship between India’s northeast and the rest of the country–Rock On 2enters territory it simply is not equipped or inclined to deal with. Proof can be found in the simplistic, black-and-white view of locals that the film holds: as either helpless innocents or corrupt evildoers, who need the intervention of a group of self-righteous musicians from Mumbai to set things right. A scene at a temporary camp towards the end is particularly cringeworthy in this regard. But you do get the sense that any offense caused was not entirely intended and that the writers were only thinking of ways to hoistAdi up onto the moral high-ground, rather than the specifics of the context in which this was achieved: Meghalaya, in this sense, is perfectly interchangeable with any other pretty, hilly rural area for all the detail we’re offered about the people, life or culture here. 

There were several other tangents that could’ve made for better points of focus than that described above–it would’ve been nice to have found out a bit more about Shashank Arora’s character Uday, for instance, or about Jiah’s stage fright, for that matter. Unfortunately, makers of Rock On 2 have elected to go too big too fast, resulting in an even more middling sequel to an already middling film.