Cast: Harman Baweja, Priyanka Chopra, Boman Irani
Director: Harry Baweja
There is no easy way to put this so I'm just going to come out and say it — Love Story 2050 is a film so preposterous, it makes you want to round up the people associated with it and flog them publicly till they apologise for wasting your time and for burning up good money making this trash.
The movie kicks off in present day Adeleide where Karan (Harman Baweja) falls head over heels in love with Sanaa (Priyanka Chopra) the moment he sees her chasing butterflies in a park. An hour of childish wooing and many songs later she returns the sentiment, but is killed by a speeding truck when she's crossing the road with an ice cream. Such a scream!
Unable to put up with his whining, Karan's maama, mad scientist Uncle Ya (Boman Irani) cranks up his time machine and takes off with Karan for a trip into the future. For some strange reason that I can't be bothered to explain, they're convinced Sanaa is alive and well in Mumbai 2050.
Once there in the land of flying cars, virtual maids and robot sidekicks, Karan tracks down Zeisha, an international pop star, who's a dead ringer for his dead girlfriend. Showing up everywhere she's scheduled to be — from her mid-air pop concert and a meet-and-greet fan event to her ridiculous Xbox gaming session — Karan stalks Zeisha like an obsessed teenager and doesn't give up till he convinces her she's his sweetheart from another time zone, and takes her back to present day.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, there's also a Darth Vader-like villain (complete with black cape, silly mask and heavy breathing voice) who's got his eyes on the mad scientist's time machine, and won't give up till he's chased our protagonists through this special effects-heavy futuristic city.
Sitting in the cinema watching Love Story 2050, you realise you're watching something historic — a film that for years to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies. A film people will use as a benchmark to compare other bad movies. After all, it's that rare breed of film that gets almost nothing right — starting from a script that's part-predictable-part-gobbledygook, direction that is surprisingly conspicuous by its absence, and acting that is so amateurish you want to admit them all into Kishore Namit Kapoor classes.
The special effects aren't half bad, to be honest, but director Harry Baweja is so clearly out of his depth in the sci-fi department that he manages to misuse even those. Unable to integrate them intelligently into the script, I can literally see him in front of the computer screaming, "More, I want more" to his effects guys, making sure his every frame is littered with effects even if they seem to make little sense in the context of the story.
Love Story 2050 is a love-story after all, and an insipid, passionless one at that. The leads share no chemistry whatsoever, and their innumerable love songs only slacken the pace of this film, which hobbles along punishing, clocking in at three monstrously long hours.
Boman Irani hams it up as the mad scientist maama, and Priyanka Chopra pouts and preens and flutters her eyelashes, she's earnest too but fails to inspire either affection or sympathy. The crippling blow, however, comes in the form of the film's hero, newcomer Harman Baweja who is so busy trying to look, sound, dance and fight like Hrithik Roshan that we get no glimpse at all of Harman himself.
I'm tempted to use that inevitable line — the robots in the film perform better than the actors — but no, that's not true. I believe they're merchandising scale versions of Boo and Q2, the film's two robotic characters and I'm considering buying them just so I can smash them into pieces for being the most annoying sidekicks on screen since Jar Jar Binks.
If there's one thing the film succeeds in doing, it's in uniting the audience in their relief as they step out of the cinema. Coming out of the film you feel like prisoners of war who've finally been let out of concentration camp.
For the halfway decent special effects and the sheer courage to embark on this impossible moviemaking mission, I'll go with one out of five for director Harry Baweja's Love Story 2050, go in with no expectations at all and you'll still come out disappointed.
Rating: 1 / 5 (Poor)
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