Sunday, September 11, 2016
Baar Baar Dekho
Baar Baar Dekho
Diya and Jai are childhood friends; they grow up to be a mathematician (Sidharth Malhotra) and artist (Katrina Kaif); still friends and presumably lovers. When they start behaving like “an old married couple” she proposes that they marry and he reluctantly agrees.
So far so ‘today’. But at its core, Nitya Mehra’s Baar Baar Dekho is an old-fahioned moral tale about doing the right thing, being a good son, husband, parent and so on; personal talent and ambition be damned!
The first thing that strikes a false note in the film is Jai’s horror at the nouveau riche vulgarity of Diya’s father (Ram Kapoor). He has met the dad before, doesn't he know what he is like? Then he is gobsmacked by the wedding tamasha, as if he were a foreigner not familiar with Indian marriage customs. He decides to break up with Diya because he has an offer from Cambridge and her father does not want to let his daughter go there due to the cold weather!
Just before this, a pandit with an enigmatic smile (Rajit Kapur) has explained to Jai the significance of the seven pheras, and the pointlessness of his mathematician’s insistence on logic and reason.
After the break-up Jai gets drunk on champagne and wakes up ten days later on his honeymoon in Thailand. This is a recurring occurrence in the film, he wakes up at different times in the future, gets a glimpse of what his life will be like, how he will mess up and then get chance to rectify his mistakes.
As an idea it is interesting (Hollywood has done this sort of thing many times), but the execution is dull. The film and its locations look great, the actors are good looking, but the film has absolutely no zing. The lives of the lead pair are banal, the emotions are superficial, and if the film sells the concept of happiness as dreary routine, or that the little moments are to be celebrated over the big ones, then what’s the big deal?
Labels: Cinemaah
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