Bollywood and its abortive attempts at time travel

Time travel is a tricky genre to attempt. It requires finesse in visuals, meticulousness in storytelling, and understanding of emotions. So far, so gaud(y). This is a space that Hindi filmmakers revel at, but we have rather scoffed at due to the inanity and insanity at display. There’s barely any title that has clicked. The first ever time travel film that I saw was Imtiaz Punjabi’s Fun2shh: Dudes in the 10th century. I read dudes as duds, which was exactly the fate of the film, despite me enjoying it thoroughly when I saw this take on Back To The Future. Why did it fail? Was it because of its box-office clash with Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.? Was any fuss made about clashes back then? Any idea how to go back to 2003 to figure out? Anyway.

Let’s come to the year 2008 that took us to the year 2050. No prizes for guessing, the film is Love Story 2050, starring Harman Baweja and Priyanka Chopra. This magnanimous debut tanked right on day one, with complaints about its daunting length, hammy acting, tacky VFX and an underwhelming leading man. The idea was ambitious, the result was the opposite. Here was a film where the actors barely responded to the new world around them, with flying cars and robots. The eyes remain intact, the face blank, and the delivery flat. How can the audience respond to this new world when the actors who inhabit it stay uninspired?

Another rendition of Back To The Future was Vipul Shah’s Action Replayy, starring Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, six years after she betrayed him in a chilling encounter in the kick-ass Khakee. The first scene itself was a downer, with repulsive pancake plastered on two gorgeous looking leads to suggest they have aged. Bachchan barely managed to keep up with the slapstick tone of this supposed comedy, especially around veterans like Kumar and Rajpal Yadav. Randhir Kapoor showed up as an eccentric scientist who makes a time machine that transports us to the 70s. This was a film that Shekhar Kapur was making with Aamir Khan back in the 90s, before it was shelved due to unknown reasons. Shah had a crackling theme in hand that went rather unnoticed.

Surprisingly, the only Hindi film that has worked in this genre in the last many years is Vikram Bhatt’s Haunted 3D. Read the last thing- 3D. It was India’s first film to be converted into the format, thus arousing curiosity. The reaction inside the hall was the complete opposite of the genre it represented. It worked somehow, and the filmmaker then moved on to Dangerous Ishq, again in 3D, 3 times the 'D'isaster.

Nitya Mehra had a well-themed idea of time travel for her film Baar Baar Dekho, where a man wakes up in multiple time zones to rectify what he did wrong. So we see some delightful visuals here too, in the past, present, and future. But the leads failed to ignite any passion or chemistry that could make the genre and the narrative palpable. Unlike its name, it was barely a one time watch.

All eyes rest on Dobaaraa now that has released today. Will this Anurag Kashyap film break the jinx of the time-travel genre? Only time will tell. No puns here.

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