‘LSD 2: Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2’ (2024) Movie Review - A Poncy’s Wet Dream

Dibakar Banerjee's Love Sex Aur Dhoka (2010) is reshaped for the digital age, which gives rise to Like Share Aur Download. The movie, however, is titled Love Sex Aur Dhoka 2, and the anthology format remains intact in this sequel. Some things remain the same. One of those things, unfortunately, is the fact that LSD 2, like its prequel, comes across as a film school project consisting of wafer-thin and unoriginal ideas. Once again, the first and the last stories remain yawn-worthy, while the middle section's potential stays unrealized due to its ephemeral runtime. LSD 2 is the work of a poseur who wants to be perceived as an auteur.

Banerjee has till now not made a film as mind-blowing as Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! Khosla Ka Ghosla was good until it wasn't. Shanghai and Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! looks impressive but fills you with tedium. Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar and his Ghost Stories segment are easy to admire from a distance as one doesn't feel like embracing them. However, what continues to be stunning about all the Dibakar Banerjee films is the detailing. In LSD 2, a slapping incident from one short story appears as a headline in another story. The comment sections are filled with lines you would actually find on Instagram. They range from "Hey" to pervert-y compliments. Even the live sessions, promotional reels, and YouTube-like videos are authentically shot. A clip of a laughing man and those final scenes in the Metaverse are also faithfully recreated.

But beneath these decorations lies nothing but emptiness. The first story concerns people's obsession with Splitsvilla and Bigg Boss-like reality shows. It says viewers are hungry for content, and content creators are hungry for views. How do you grab the eyeballs of the audience? Through cheap drama generated through a slap, a bitter mother, or an orgasm (not necessarily in this order). The lesson here is that reality shows are rehearsed, not real (a confrontation is "polished" and converted into a smack across the face for audience engagement). Who knew?

The third story deals with a YouTuber (Abhinav Singh), so it becomes about gaining subscribers. It also uses AI to enter the dark side of the Internet. Basically, AI can be bad, and people are slowly turning into pixelated figures to escape real-world problems and achieve fake happiness. The intention with these two stories might have been, "Let's show a mirror to the audience." Perhaps Banerjee and his writers, Shubham and Prateek Vats, should have first looked at their script before showing us something so superficial. Banerjee presents banal thoughts through a style so ostentatious that it comes across as a poncy's wet dream rather than a filmmaker's attempt to entertain or say something new or revelatory to his audience.

We often see things through the perspective of the characters, which is just Banerjee's way of unimaginatively putting us into the shoes of the characters. This point-of-view technique doesn't present the surroundings in an original or inventive manner. It also doesn't tether us to the characters' experiences. In fact, such obvious choices pull us away from the screen - they remind you that you are watching a decorated piece of fiction. The one tolerable thing about LSD 2 is its second story, where, at one point, a police officer refers to Kullu (Bonita Rajpurohit), a trans character, as Manali, and this joke effectively tells you how transgender people are treated by others, how insensitive the police can be during cases that are about ordinary, powerless citizens (a man is brutally assaulted and left to die on the road). Banerjee should have developed this segment into a feature. It needed more meat, more details, and a clear conclusion instead of the slapdash bleak ending that is pasted here.

With LSD 2, Banerjee has given us a showy experiment, not a satisfying experience. It's too self-satisfied with its posture, so you don't even feel like admiring it from a distance. LSD 2 is neither illuminating nor potent enough to start an introspection. It merely shines a light on its director's flaw: He doesn't have intriguing ideas.

Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times