Katrina Kaif and Sidharth Malhotra’s Baar Baar Dekho is in screens today. Directed by Nitya Mehra, the film is touted as a high-concept love story. Here’s our Baar Baar Dekho movie review.
Jai ( Sidharth) and Diya ( Katrina) are childhood friends who are in love with each other. Jai is a Mathematics professor in Delhi and Diya is an artist. When Diya proposes marriage to a commitment-phobic Jai who wants to move to Cambridge and teach there, the discussion somehow reaches Diya’s father ( Ram Kapoor) .
The night before their wedding, Diya and Jai have a fight and the girl leaves, saying she was never coming back. Jai makes the most of the bottle of champagne at hand and drifts off to sleep. Only to wake up next to Diya on his honeymoon, in Thailand. He finds out he’s been married for ten days, but has no recollection whatsoever of the last ten days.
Every time Jai goes to sleep, he wakes up in a different year, a different time and place. He doesn’t know what is happening to him. And for most part of Baar Baar Dekho, the audience is on the same page as Jai: clueless about what is happening on the screen in front of them.
Debutant director Nitya Mehra attempts to make a ’high-concept’ love story, only to fall light years short of what the film could have been. The film keeps you guessing, to the point that you don’t really care. The screenplay doesn’t have any room for anything except this feast of beauty; from the background to the people in front of the camera. The film leaves you un-understandably restless; you want to leave the theatre, but the promise of Kala Chashma at the end of the film keeps you waiting.
Mehra’s imagination makes Sidharth and Katrina travel from ages eight to their teenage, to mid-twenties, to mid-forties, and then late-fifties. The film essentially tries to drive home the message of carpe diem. The ’concept’ could have taken off, but is let down by the execution of Baar Baar Dekho. That is, if you count out the half-hearted performances by the lead actors.
Sidharth Malhotra and Katrina Kaif both seem to think they are in the film to make it look good. There’s hardly any acting on the part of either. While Katrina’s moments of frustration and sorrow invoke the stray laugh from the theatre, Sidharth’s neither-here-nor-there Jai hardly makes an impact. The supporting cast too meld into the rest of the sub-par performances. Ram Kapoor helps people let out the occasional laugh. Rajit Kapoor, Rohan Joshi, Sayani Gupta, Sarika, the rest of them all are there in the film probably because they were written into the script.
Baar Baar Dekho shines in the cinematography department. Ravi K Chandran’s camera captures Thailand, Glasgow and Katrina’s abs in all their glory; making Baar Baar Dekho more about the fluff than anything substantial.Jasleen Royal and Prateek Kuhad’s music is the star in Baar Baar Dekho. Kho Gaye Hum Kahan is a hummable track; as for Kala Chashma. Sigh.
In all, watch Baar Baar Dekho if you swear by the newer, fitter, leaner, hotter Katrina Kaif and her abs. There’s nothing much to watch otherwise.