Baar Baar Dekho: Rewind, Forward, Rewind and Dekho!
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Nitya Mehra's 'Baar Baar Dekho' is an earnest attempt to tell that life in the 'Here and Now' is more beautiful than in the past and the future; therefore, stay in the 'Here and Now'. And it is the most challenging task for many of us because the past haunt us and the future is too promising and hence, we lose sight of the present. In the quest of making the future 'picture perfect' we avoid 'the moment' in hand that can give us assured happiness than the one in the future.
Nitya Mehra's lead protagonist Jai Varma gets baffled to find himself time traveling and seeing visuals of his life in the future that can make him lose and ruin his personal life. Shuttling from past, future and the present Jai Varma learns the most important lessons of life to stay happy and make it worthy. Through Jai Varma and his lady love Diya Kapoor aka DK we also time travels and tries to pick up possible challenges and mistakes we are committing or may commit. In due course of time in the movie hall many of us may end up realizing the importance of the 'Here and Now' and may also decide to 'Baar Baar Dekho' our life to escape or deal with the impending danger of losing out the subtle happiness present in our life.
The story of 'Baar Baar Dekho' hovers around two childhood friends Jai and Diya who are about to get married but are locked up in a dilemma because Jai wants to focus more on his professional life and career. He doesn't want to lose the most cherished offer of pursuing his research on Vedic mathematics in the prestigious universities like Harvard and Cambridge. And he gets more perplexed and finds himself on the crossroads whether to say yes or no to Diya when he receives one such offer from his most liked university and that too a few days before his marriage. Shattered by Jai's reluctance to get married, Diya walks out of her newly bought fully furnished apartment by her rich father Mr. Kapoor (Boman Irani) leaving behind Jai to deal with his dilemma. A drunken Jai wakes up to find himself in a different time zone that is ten days after his marriage in Thailand celebrating his honeymoon with Diya. This leap of time zones continues from 10 days, two years, 16 years and then 34 years ahead.
The debutante director Nitya Mehra along with her writer friends Sri Rao and Anuvab Pal in the haste of telling us life philosophies forgot or may have missed the importance of entertaining the audience by etching out fully each characters in the movie and creating moments and scenes to get convinced to what they want to convey as a message. For instance, Jai doesn't appear as a selfish and self-centered boy, lover and a husband; there are no sufficient family moments to show their relationship turbulence; the parents and friends are having very less role in the whole happenings shown in the leaps of time zones and there is not a single moment of humour in any of the frames. Unfortunately, the most attempted concept of time travel in Hollywood could have been done much better by the team of 'Baar Baar Dekho' which they missed by a whisker. Sarika (Mom of Diya), Ram Kapoor, Rajit Kapur (Pandit), Sayani Gupta (Common Friend) are good in their respective roles but deserved more space in the plot to justify their roles. When Dharma and Excel join hands it's bound to give a damn good look to their movie and we find it here too with fine production values. Ravi K Chandran's cinematography holds your attention and the locations are very beautiful.
Katrina Kaif as Diya Kapoor looks stunning but doesn't look or act differently from rest of her movies. She has a copycat effect which she may need to work on. Siddharth Malhotra as Jai Varma is handsome and is left with no choice but to remain bewildered throughout the movie because of the untimely and unexpected time zone leaps he encounters. He does age because of the expensive and sophisticated prosthetics but could have supported the same by his acting skills which he fails to pay attention to.
In short, Baar Baar Dekho has lessons for life but very little to entertain. Though, the film ends with the already hit item song 'Kaala Chasma' you walk out with a clear lens to revisit your life with a resolve to be worthy of what you have in your life in the 'Here and Now' and live each day at a time. Go and watch 'Baar Baar Dekho' but not 'Baar Baar' only once!
Movie Rating: 6/10
Cast: Sidharth Malhotra (Jai Varma), Katrina Kaif (Diya Kapoor), Sarika, Ram Kapoor, Sayani Gupta (Chitra), Rajit Kapur, Rohan Joshi, Taaha Shah Badusha (Tarun) Genre: Romance Director: Nitya Mehra Producers: Hiroo Yash Johar, Karan Johar, Ritesh Sidhwani, Farhan Akhtar Written by: Anvita Dutt (Dialogues) Screenplay: Nitya Mehra, Anuvab Pal, Sri Rao Story by: Sri Rao Music by: Amaal Mallik, Arko, Badshah, Jasleen Royal, Bilaal Saeed Cinematography: Ravi K Chandran Edited by: Amitabh Shukla Production: Dharma Productions, Excel Entertainment Distributor: Eros International Release Date: 9th September, 2016 Duration: 141 Minutes Language: Hindi
