The world may be on the verge of ending, but Bollywood will still manage to squeeze in one last cheesy romantic comedy to make our final moments just a little more painful. Adding to our misery this year, with yet another cringeworthy attempt at a big budget production is Yash Raj Films’ Befikre.

Directed by Aditya Chopra and starring Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor, the movie looks like the repurposed and repackaged version of hundreds of other romcoms, Bollywood and Hollywood. It's not like there aren't or can't be good romantic comedies. Take, for example, Tanu Weds Manu, or Dum Laga Ke Haisha. But the film industry seems reluctant to try and look for an alternative line of storytelling. I mean, if it ain't broke.. .right?

The much awaited trailer for the movie came out on October 10 and has since been viewd by a record 11 million people. But what exactly is so awesome about this trailer, or for that matter, the film? The trailer looks absolutely uninspiring. In fact, several people people are already claiming that it looks a lot like another Yash Raj Films movie: Neal 'N' Nikki. Let us pray that it is nothing like that disaster, though. Befikre presents two beautiful, young people, who run into each other in Paris. Sparks fly. But they don't want a serious relationship. So they just have fun and (while this wasn't shown anywhere in the trailer, but you know the drill) fall in love and live happily ever after. 

Of course, the movie will probably bang the box office (too) and gross several hundred crores, but just how long can anyone continue to beat a dead horse like that? Like most big-budget Bollywood romcoms, there are three key tropes that come into play here:

1) Everything is larger than life

Of course. The film's protagonists will obviously have to have a life everyone is envious of. They always seem to be partying. God knows how they make rent or eat, but they always have enough money to party-like-there-is-no-tomorrow at a loud nightclub, while consuming copious amounts of alcohol in shots and such. It's either that, or they are on a yatch. Again, partying. Or they are at a carnival. Yes, partying.

Or they are at fill-in-the-blank partying. Thug life.

2) Exotic foreign locations

You can't fall in love in India. Heck, no. Delhi is unsafe, Mumbai lacks space, Bangalore folks have to survive hours of traffic to even attempt anything close to love and who cares about our small towns, right? Add to that the parents, nosy neighborhood aunties and moral policing groups - who devote all their energies to nipping every budding romance - and it seems really impossible that India can sustain love.

No, they have to be in some exotic foreign country where the roads are clean and the views picture-perfect desktop wallpapers. Be it Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Bachna Ae Haseeno, Salaam Namaste or Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, sparks only fly when you have to pay for coffee with Dollars or Euros.

3) Masti (read love) ka the end

According to Bollywood, modern relationships are all bout avoiding the L-word. It is a word that causes things to get messy. It is a word that causes complications. But of course, in Bollywood, love is also as inevitable as death. Neither is true in real life and both somehow manage to be a fixture in Hindi cinema. 

Just how many more remakes of DDLJ do we survive (even as the movie continues to run at Maratha Mandir every day!) for Bollywood to realise we are ready to move on to a different romcom-cum-masala film that we can continue to repurpose for the next two decades?

Also read - Story behind Indradhanush: India's first iconic sci-fi TV show