BAAR BAAR DEKHO (U/A)

Director: Nitya Mehra

Cast: Katrina Kaif, Sidharth Malhotra, Ram Kapoor, Sayani Gupta, Rohan Joshi

Running time: 142 minutes

It’s an Adam Sandler film festival this Bollywood weekend at the theatres. While the Nawazuddin- starrer Freaky Ali borrows generously from Happy Gilmore, Baar Baar Dekho is a desi pop culture- infused Click cocktail. Click the fantasy comedy where Sandler would click buttons on a remote control and find himself in different points of time in his future.

In Baar Baar Dekho, the holy red thread tied around his right wrist is that remote control of sorts for genius mathematician Jai Varma (Sidharth Malhotra). Or so we are made to believe. After wearing that thread — on the eve of his wedding with Diya Kapoor (Katrina Kaif) — every time he goes to sleep he wakes up either 10 days later or two years later or even decades later and once even goes back and forth to the same day a la Groundhog Day. That’s the other film Baar Baar Dekho shamelessly lifts its core ideas from. 

But incredibly while both those Hollywood films were comedies, Baar Baar Dekho, despite the time travel premise, is not funny. It’s not even romantic — all the ishq waala love is done with in the first half an hour — and because it’s treading that fine line, it’s not even sci-fi. It’s just a very confused film, as confused as that expression of Jai almost throughout the movie. 

So these two, Jai and Diya, grew up together and are much in love when we meet them as the mathematician and the digital artist. Jai is like a six-pack Shakuntala Devi who can solve any mathematical problem instantly, and that turns Diya on. Touche! It’s only when the childhood sweethearts are set to get married that he starts thinking about where to settle down and whose money to accept and refuse and all those self-identity questions which are now fashionable for the groom to ask. 

Those problems will however not come up when Jai will wake up in the distant future. Then, in pure Click territory, he will realise that everyone from his mother to wife to children had moved away from him because he’s simply neglected them.
And then with his beautiful mind, he would try to solve this problem with a white marker on a glass window. Borrowed Bollywood is bland, boring and just bad. 

And when you are a first-time director helming a film with leads like Sidharth and Katrina, you are in even deeper trouble. Nitya Mehra, who had assisted on Life of Pi and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, might have thrown in every little trending element in her mix — from happening stand-up comedian to can’t-go-wrong wedding setting — but handling actors is a different ball game. And if undirected, weak leads can ruin even the couple of well-written scenes. 

After a novelist in Kapoor & Sons, Sidharth is asked to look convincing as a mathematician. Really! No wonder there is a constant question mark on his face right through the film. He is clearly out of depth for a role like this and is only handsomely adequate in the frothy portions. 

We can use up a lot of pages here just going bonkers about how stunningly beautiful Katrina looks in Baar Baar Dekho.
Through Ravi Chandran’s magic lens and under Yasmin Karachiwala’s abs-olute guidance, she is breathtakingly bewitching.
If you manage to get past that, you would realise the performance is not tempered correctly — too much in many scenes, too little in others. 

The songs (multiple music directors) are nice, production values and design befitting a Dharma production, dance steps and costumes chic enough to be aped. And of course that Kala chashma anthem that had been popped even before the trailer. 
In this constant quest by the big production houses to get a hot new pairing with the customary ingredients of a feel-good entertainer, the overall experience often lacks heart. And what happens is a film with a title like Baar Baar Dekho struggles to merit even a one-time dekho.

Is Baar Baar Dekho worth a one-time watch? Tell t2@abp.in