There’s a thrilling Ashton Kutcher film from the early 2000s, called The Butterfly Effect, which explores the dark side of time travel; when you wake up months, maybe years later or earlier, and are transported to a whole new world. In this new world, you may be older, younger or even adorn a new identity. It’s 2016, and yet, the mere thought of the film is enough to give me the chills.
Baar Baar Dekho is the happy, candy-floss, slightly inconsistent version of The Butterfly Effect.
“Main sochta tha zindagi ek simple si equation hai (I thought life was a simple equation),” says Sidharth Malhotra at the beginning of the trailer. It all goes topsy-turvy from this point. From having a pretty cool life, and a pretty cool girlfriend (she proposes to him, woot woot), Jai (Malhotra) suddenly finds himself waking up months, years later in different time zones of his life.
After many frantic “wtf is happening to me” moments, he realises that every time he sleeps, he wakes up in a different age. Instead of tackling the severe psychological and neurotical damages of this sort of time travel, Baar Baar Dekho attempts to dramatise it, and at a certain level even bring in some humour.
However, shit does hit the roof, when Jai wakes up as a 46-year-old, and does some superficial math equation to realise he has four days to live. What would you do at this point? Well, Jai sleeps, and wakes up 10 years behind, and makes the life-changing decision that he needs to correct what he did wrong back then.
Which, if you haven’t got the memo, is to win Dia’s (Katrina Kaif) heart again. Because this is a love story, remember? And here’s the clincher: even though the premise is quite interesting (though not entirely original) Sidharth Malhotra and Katrina Kaif have no chemistry. Zero. Zilch.
Which is a pity, because they both really seem to be trying.
Unfortunately for the two of them, earlier this year, Kapoor & Sons showed us that you can make a fun film, with chartbusters and all, and still win everybody’s heart with a tight, well-written script. So Baar Baar Dekho has no excuse for a shoddy story.
If this ends up being one of those trailers where most of the film is revealed in two minutes, Baar Baar Dekho is not very impressive. If your entire story comes down to the chemistry and dynamics between your lead pair, you guys are in trouble.
However, given that Excel Entertainment and Dharma Productions have co-produced this, we expect something else, something better up their sleeve. Only time will tell (pun intended).
Watch the trailer for Baar Baar Dekho
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