AI Fiction Lacks Credibility

Tere Baaton Mein Aisa Ulhja Jiya

Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Kriti Sanon, Dharmendra, Dimple Kapadia

Direction: Amit Joshi, Aradhana Sah

Aryan Agnihotri (Shahid Kapoor) is a robotic engineer with a visible commitment phobia which he wears on his sleeve. He dresses it up with an arrogance of affluence. You have office colleagues literally drooling over him and he nonchalantly is in rejection mode. A needless intro of his firing a domestic help at home only points to some skewed facet of his character. Moving on to the relevant, Aryan is a moneybags simpliciter and money bag inheritor. His maasi (maternal aunt) Urmila Shukla (Dimple Kapadia) heads the robotics company in happening USA. The filmmaker lets his cinematographer capture her amazing affluence into which home (read palace) Aryan enters as maasi Urmi travels to Belgium. No problems because he has the opportunity to run into Sifra (Kriti Sanon) who welcomes him as a designed module would work on a targeted prey. It doesn’t take long, in fact, it is immediate and instant for Aryan to take a passionate liking for the lady who anyways is all over him. Within two days they are in bed and passions fly high. However, maasi Urmi plays spoilsport and spills the beans. No, not the one he is making for breakfast in his post-passionate nightgown but the symbolic one when she informs him that Sifra is not a human being.

The robot-human relationship of programmed attraction is typically filmi. It lacks a credential base. In all fairness, the two stars try their best to add nails to the story that is lacking credibility. Unable to sort his dilemma, Aryan returns to India to live with his family in Mumbai which includes his parents (Rakesh Bedi and Anubha Fateh Puria), paternal uncle and aunt (Brijbhushan Shukla and Grusha Kapoor) and a cartoon mama (Rajesh Kumar). He is intended for ‘slap’ ‘stick’ comedy. The family is headed by Senior Agnihotri (Dharam paaji). Interestingly the credit titles refer to him as Dharmendra Deol. Why is Deol a marketing print?! The family is seriously concerned about the matrimonial disinterest of Aryan and is thrilled to know that he is in love with Sifra. Of course, the family is not informed of Sifra being a product of AI. One perceivable reason could be that the family is unfamiliar with the genus of the species.

The film streams without much steam. Yawning spells of romance, some predictable songs, preps for a big fat Indian wedding and a lot of contrived humour lead to the climax that deserves to be held back. Not so much out of any business considerations for the filmmaker as much as a deserving lesson to those who go by the glitter of gold.

The cast are uniformly stereotypical. What they bring to the table is what was ordered. Dharmendra in a small cameo gets some space and like ever in his career the script falls short of exploiting his talent. Dimple Kapadia has upped her style quotient further. Looks gorgeous and gives her role just adequate flesh to keep it in place. Kriti Sanon and Shahid Kapoor (interesting cast) dish out amazing screen chemistry. Oops, they waste it on a poor script. You sometimes get a feel that Shahid is mixing up his Jab We Met with Kabeer Singh. There are moments in the film when he is predictably topnotch. For instance, his emotive turbulence when the robot tells him “I missed you too” is a watchable moment. Kriti Sanon may look very good but her strength is surely in playing out a robot which is highly intelligent. This Mimi actor is finding her space.

Maasi Urmi talks about her robot as being a product of 13 years of trial and error. As far as Amit Joshi’s film is concerned, it still occupies the error zone. Reacting to the revelation that Sifra is a robot planted on Aryan, the latter feels angry and describes himself as a lab rat. Over to the audience.