The title of this film, the makers remind us helpfully, means obsession. But the only obsession that Junooniyat demonstrates is with giving romance a bad name. The film tells the same old pappy, pulpy story of a pair of young lovers up against sundry pyaar ke dushman. The latter category is, predictably, personified by a father who thinks he owns his daughter and an unsuspecting NRI bridegroom who walks into a wedding ceremony, family in tow, blissfully unaware that the bride isn't dying to tie the knot with him.

Writer-director Vivek Agnihotri's love story Junooniyat unfolds between the snow-capped peaks of Kashmir and the colourful streets of Punjab. College student Suhaani and army captain Jahan Bakshi's relationship also punctuates what is essentially a series of music videos. Captain Jahan Bakshi (Pulkit Samrat) is a believer in choice and not destiny. He's a poet and a patriot whose weekly army ration seems to include tins of hair wax.

Between choice and destiny, which would you pick? Is it really a choice one makes if destined for something? And such is the subtext to this sappy, clichd love story of an army officer who believes he's made a choice, falls in love but appears buffeted by destiny's changing winds. Captain Jahan Bakshi (Pulkit Samrat) finds Suhaani (Yami Gautam) swimming in a restricted zone and brings her to his camp. Friendly banters turn into passionate letters and the couple decides to marry after singing four songs in 40 minutes.

He's a reserved Army Captain, who plays scrabble and writes poems. She's a spitfire civilian, who is a swimming champ from Amritsar. Their paths keep crossing because she keeps trespassing. And therein lies the problem with this film. It is a sequence of amateur, half-baked plot points and situations that tries to bring alive the romance of the '70s. But it falls flat because it lacks conviction. Though there are attempts to include Facebook references to give it a contemporary feel, the characters in this film belong to an outdated era.