Film Review: BAAR BAAR DEKHO

Question 1: What if you had the power to look into your future 15 years, or say, even 30 years hence, especially if you were getting married to your childhood sweetheart? Director Nitya Mehra, after having assisted several top-notch directors such as Ang Lee and Mira Nair, turns independent with a seldom explored subject – time-travel. Diya (Katrina Kaif) is a renowned artist in love with Jai Verma (Siddharth Malhotra), a well-known mathematician with calculations and solutions at his finger-tips. All she does is show unrestrained affection towards Jai.

Going back and forth in time, Jai experiences the vagaries of marriage, foreseeing the worst it could offer. An inordinately long first half is barely remedied in the second. Katrina is streets ahead in looks than in her acting, and in ‘Baar Baar Dekho’, looks gorgeous and displays a size-zero figure to the maximum (or should it be minimum?), while Siddharth Malhotra sports a perpetually vacuous look. The supporting cast of Sarika (as Jai’s mother), Ram Kapoor (as Diya’s father) and Sayani Gupta (as Chitra) are average. Rajit Kapur, as the pandit who, in a special appearance, elucidates the virtues of the ‘saat pheras’, does well. The outdoor locales of Glasgow, London and Thailand are well chosen.

Question 2: What if you had the power to choose between BBD and ______? The viewer is shown a lot of complex maths in the film, but alas, despite a well-intentioned storyline, the numbers simply do not add up