Akshay Kumar and Vipul Shah returning together with a time travel comedy on the Big Diwali weekend sounded great and exciting for every Bollywood fan. But sadly, once again the HIT machine fails to deliver and the actor ditches his every die-hard admirer with a simply awful movie which keeps hanging between different genres of Fiction, Adventure, Comedy and Science Fiction. In fact ACTION REPLAYY forced me to think that whether Akshay ever watches the rushes of the movies he is working in and discusses the product in the making with his director? The thought came to my mind because after consistently giving weak and bad movies in the past, Akshay repeatedly commits the same mistake again and returns with a thoroughly unlikable film which is even less entertaining than his miserable duds, Chandni Chowk to China and Blue.
First of all, nobody can say that it's an Original Story Plot as the writers take all their inputs from the Classic English Trilogy "BACK TO THE FUTURE (Part I-III)" and they cannot deny it in any way. And further talking about this inspirational angle, ACTION REPLAYY can be easily rated as "One of the most destructive rip-offs or inspired movies made in the history of Indian Cinema". The statement will be more clear and meaningful for the viewers who have actually watched the Original English Classics and still remember them. In straight words ACTION REPLAYY brutally murders the interesting plot taken from BTTF and completely ruins the idea with a highly amateurish, silly and boring kind of product which stands not even close to the 'B' of BACK TO THE FUTURE Series.
Frankly speaking, How can you seriously enjoy a movie made on the Time- Travel subject in which the director does not even care to explain you anything about the concept and only shows a professor and his weird machine which can take you back to the past years just like a Local BEST or DTC Bus going towards your home street. Moreover, the boy moving back to the past (in the year 1975), easily goes there, makes some changes and then returns back, just to find everything in the present changed as per his own requirements. That was really the most silly thought put in by the writers with a very poor visual imagination and creativity.
Although made with good production values and eye-catching colourful backgrounds ACTION REPLAYY fails to make an impression mainly because it is neither a good science fiction nor a fine emotional drama. And more importantly, it is quite far from being called a COMEDY since there is not even one good scene which can make you laugh as you did in some of Akshay's earlier famous comedy classics. The writing is bad, the characterization is poor and the acting is pretty loud at most of the places by all the prominent actors. Akshay is not at all funny and also looks quite weird in his 70s getup. Aishwarya does look beautiful in those well worked upon dresses but on the entertainment quotient the entire cast performs over the top and fails miserably. Particular the individual tracks of Rannvijay Singh, Om Puri and Kiron Kher are all below the standards. Randhir Kapoor, Neha Dhupia and Rajpal Yadav are hardly there on the screen and get wasted. Only Aditya Roy Kapur as the time travelling son of Akshay and Aishwarya leaves an impact and the boy would certainly get more work after this, that's for sure.
Pritam as the music-man once again remixes some old hit punjabi phrases in "Zor Ka Jhatka" and also gets his inspiration from a "Bombay Rockers" Song. He certainly knows something about the art of getting inspired and yet keep on going without any fear. However I felt the background music by Salim-Sulaiman more enjoyable than the entire musical soundtrack.
Overall, ACTION REPLAYY is a bad attempt made on the subject of time travel with a small pinch of love. In fact it's a patch on the films made on the similar plots. It has simply got no entertainment value as such and fails to keep you hooked in right from its starting reels. But the point here to be noted is that what BACK TO THE FUTURE does to you in just 90 minutes, ACTION REPLAYY is not able to give you even 10% of it in its more than 2 hours of duration. So we should seriously study this difference, in order to come up with at least 50% of the Original Inspiring movies with some added Indian touches. At times Bollywood has delivered equivalent or even better remakes like "Ek Ruka Hua Faisla" or "Chhoti Si Baat". But ACTION REPLAYY remains one of the most under- worked and lifeless inspired movies of the current times.
In short, even the repeat telecast of Akshay's MASTER CHEF T.V. Serial will entertain you more than this tacky rip off. And I think the statement says it all.
