The concept of the road-romance is not new in Hindi cinema. When action films, family melodramas and soppy love stories began to have an uncertain fate at the box office, it reappeared in a new garb in and as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge (1995). In the wake of the release of Ranbir-Priyanka starrer Anjaana Anjaani, Shoma A. Chatterji explores the phenomenon

The road-romance is not exactly a new genre in mainstream Hindi films. It began way back with the Raj Kapoor-Nargis-starrer Chori Chori 'inspired' from the Hollywood hit It Happened One Night. Mahesh Bhatt brought it back as Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin (1991) that became the biggest hit in the Bhatt stable.

The music, the screen chemistry between Amir Khan and Pooja Bhatt and the dynamic pace in which the narrative moved from place to place as the relationship between the two strangers grew were the stars that led to the film's commercial success.

There were other films too such as Solva Saal starring Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman with an unusual storyline.

Almost every film that portrays romance evolving during a journey on the road or train or plane, has a story borrowed from a Hollywood film. This is not surprising because rarely did the Indian social backdrop offer the circumstances for a road romance between a boy and a girl in India till the 1990s.

So, in 2010, Siddharth Anand comes forward to give us a road romance between two America-bred Indians against a US backdrop. Does this work? Let us first get to the earlier hits that did.

Pyar To Hona Hi Tha (1998) starring Ajay Devgun and Kajol was a self-confessed remake of the Hollywood film French Kiss. But to give the director his due, this film's derivations and direction were flawless.

For those who had not seen the original Hollywood film, it could easily pass for an original. Its title song was belted out by Remo in his Hindi debut and the tracks were also hits. The film had fantastic music scored by Jatin-Lalit. It opened in Paris but later moved over to home ground.

Shaad Ali's Bunty Aur Babli (2005) was said to have been inspired by Bonny and Clyde.

But the parallels, if any, disappeared completely in the final film that packaged entertainment spiked up with a journey romance between two crooks Bunty and Babli who keep running away from the determined police officer, fall in love, get married and even have a baby along the way!

A very long-drawn-out melodramatic climax led to its unmaking in the end rescued by the sizzling Kajarare item number of Aishwarya Rai.

Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met (2007) was a big hit. A feisty Punjabi girl bumps into a depressed Mumbai businessman on an overnight sleeper to Delhi. While attempting to get him back on board when he alights at a station, they are stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Having walked out of his pressurized corporate job, the man has no destination in mind, except suicide. But the girl forces him to accompany her back home and then on to elope with her secret boyfriend. But the boyfriend ditches her and she discovers that she has fallen in love with this other young man. She becomes the silent one while he tries to cheer her up.

"The plot is nothing. People don't come to see the plot. They come to see the film. Every film is about a boy and a girl falling in love; the treatment differs," says Ali about the success of his film that surprised him.

"Often, the journey can be emotional rather than physical. Jab We Met was all about journey because I feel that I can never get enough of travelling personally," Imtiaz sums up.

These films, taken together or individually, gave a fresh face to romance on celluloid that had slowly faded away with the phenomenal rise of Amitabh Bachchan and his Angry-Young-Man films. The heroes who followed – Sunny Deol, Sanjay Dutt, Jackie Shroff, did not quite exude a romantic air and it was left to Amir Khan, Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan to pick up the threads of romance all over again.

The road-romance became the call of the day. It had several original features for an entertainment-seeking audience – a dynamic storyline that moved in terms of the narrative, the geography, and the characters that evolved into something different from what they were when the film opened.

This made the love that grew between the young pair seem more credible and more entertaining, spiked up with twists and turns that did not appear either melodramatic or coincidental even if and when they were.

Mamta Anand who wrote the story of Anjaana Anjaani directed by husband Siddharth, dipped into the Hollywood flick The Bucket List in which two terminally ill men escape from a cancer ward and head off on a road trip with a wish list of to-dos before they die. But Siddharth strikes a note of dissonance.

He says that the film is inspired by the American sitcom Friends. "I remember when I watched Friends I wanted to meet and know every character. That is how I wanted the audience to feel about Ranbir and Priyanka in Anjaana Anjaani.," says Anand.

But the audience will not want to feel and touch Kiara and Akash because it will not identify with the reasons for their respective suicidal attempts, their lifestyle and their approach towards each other and, last but never the least, the final reunion on the same bridge that brought them together, with the promise of living, instead of dying together for whatever reasons giving the lie to the telling title Anjaana Anjaani.

"We shot in iconic New York. We shot with Ranbir and Priyanka in New York's Cafe Lalo where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks met in When Harry Met Sally," Siddharth details.

The Central Park's ice-skating rink, the beautiful skyscape of Las Vegas and San Francisco do not influence the magic chemistry between the lead pair because the man and the woman are too distanced for comfort, and are people we cannot identify with, because the two strangers do not remain strangers in the end.

The story would have been more credible had they parted ways on the bridge, to begin life again. There is not much of romance, but more of razzmatazz and chutzpah in a done-to-death storyline.

Remember Roman Holiday?