Alittle over a year back Vipul Shah went to court accusing a Tollywood production company of copying his film Namastey London. He spoke about the need for copyright protection, the importance of originality and setting an example.

Incredibly, Mr Upright Shah was then well into the making of Action Replayy. He knew he was making a film about a young boy travelling back in time to help his parents fall in love. And while we have had many plots similar to that of Namastey London, there’s been only major motion picture about “maa baap ko paal poske bada karna”.

You may open your film in big bold white font shouting “Based on Shobhana Desai’s Gujarati play Action Replay” but Vipulbhai, tamne Back to the Future copy karechho. Yes, you don’t have the guts — that Robert Zemeckis had, a quarter of a century back — of hinting at a relationship between a mother and a man-who-would-be-her-son, but still Action Replayy is very much an action replay of the 1985 Hollywood classic.

So, awaaz neeche!

All that chor bazaari would have taken backstage, though, had the film even been mildly entertaining. But Action Replayy is bland and boring, unfunny and uncool, cliched and corny. And the worst bit? Even though the time machine goes 35 years back — the boy looks in his early 20s(!) — the film fails to capture the spirit of the 1970s, reducing the period to just polka dots and floral prints.

The reason for going back in time is preposterous in the first place. It’s no accidental ascent. Just because his parents Kishen (Akshay Kumar) and Mala (Aishwarya Rai) fight a lot, Bunty (Aditya Roy Kapoor) boards the time machine. Randhir Kapoor is the Einstein-lookalike here and no, you don’t want to hear him explain his invention.

In Eastman Color Mumbai, Kishen is an effeminate loser, perennially being undressed(!) by Kundan (Rannvijay Singh) and Mala is a haughty tomboy, perennially dressed up in rainbow-coloured tights. Her mother (Kirron Kher) and his father (Om Puri) fight over gulab jamun. Not the sweet, but the gulab and jamun trees in the common garden! Neha Dhupia is in the songs and Rajpal Yadav pops up in every second reel with the same question: “Saare kaam main hi karoon?”

It is Bunty who does all the kaam to get Kishen and Mala to come together through a series of stupid set-pieces. Many of them involve food, with our MasterChef India host transformed from Khiladi Kumar to Kitchen Kumar. Oh, the way they plug each other! There’s also a bizarre episode about Rannvijay singing in both male and female voices. Vipul sure produced Anees Bazmee’s Singh is Kinng but you need a special knack for that kind of mindless comedy.

Also, the writing (Suresh Nair and Aatish Kapadia) and the direction are never able to ignite that tenderness of a son parenting his father. Even a random episode of Indradhanush on Doordarshan did a far better job of it. Come on, it was always going to be difficult to repeat, forget better, the retro changrami that Farah Khan achieved with Om Shanti Om.

With his buck teeth and straightened hair, white kurta-pyjama and thick-rimmed glasses, Akshay looks like Amrish Puri’s Chuniya Mama in Saudagar. He extracts a few laughs in the second half but the man again fails to make you care enough about Kishen. Aishwarya looks scorching in most scenes — especially the bekhabar sari number — but her hyperactive histrionics can irritate the most diehard of Ash fans. Newcomer Aditya is worth watching out for.

The best thing about Action Replayy is Pritam’s Zor ka jhatka track. It’s everything the film isn’t — zany, smart and a lot of fun.

It’s unlikely that Steven Spielberg would take a break from Tintin to go after a Bollywood company that has churao-ed a film he produced 25 years back. But you know what Vipul, catching you red-handed months after your squeaky-clean act, poran jai joliya re!