Director: Nitya Mehra
Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Katrina Kaif, Sayani Gupta, Ram Kapoor
Nitya Mehra's debut outing as a director with Baar Baar Dekho is certainly a promising one. She treats this story with a lot of sincerity; a subject which in itself is a challenge to sell to the audience. A movie based on time travel transcends through different eras. In Baar Baar Dekho, the director reflects the journey of Jai Verma (Sidharth Malhotra) and Diya (Katrina Kaif) and the dramatic twists that follow.
The movie in totality reflects how one needs to balance their work and personal life. Diya and Jai are perfect for each other since the age of 8. There is no trouble in the lovers' paradise, until Diya decides to take their relationship a step ahead with marriage. Jai has dreams and a big career planned, and marriage is the last thing on his mind. That's when all the calculations go wrong despite Jai being a maths expert.
Every time he goes to sleep, he wakes up in a different time of his lifeline. When he wakes up in the future, the pandit (Rajit Kapoor) who got him married, tells him that the problems of his future lies in the past, and that's when he begins his journey of 'fixing' his life.
Songs would be a prerequisite for any other Bollywood love story but somehow in this storyline, they didn’t quite fit right. Songs acted as a distraction from an engaging story that was taking too much time to talk to its audience.
Editor Amitabh Shukla has cropped the film beautifully and makes the different timelines appear seamless and in flow. There is also freshness in the dialogues and also has enough room for comic relief, and the credit for that goes to Anvita Dutt. No one captures a film like cinematographer Ravi Chandran and in this film too he has showcased many stunning shots.
Ram Kapoor gets his comic timing right and seems to enjoy himself on screen. In a few portions, the film makes you yawn but it soon recovers as the director manages to get it back on track. Sidharth's performance is endearing and the many workshops conducted by Atul Mongia have really helped the actor to pull off this complex performance. Katrina Kaif’s performance is different than what we have seen the actress deliver so far. She looks absolutely revived as she manages to pull out several emotions and one can see that her craft has only gotten better with every film.
In the end, this time travel film certainly deserves a hit on the play button.
