Review: Baar Baar Dekho is catastrophically stupid

Nothing in Baar Baar Dekho adds up, warns Raja Sen.

I wonder if Katrina Kaif is good at poker. 

In Baar Baar Dekho, Kaif wears an all-encompassing blankness, looking like a striking but not altogether realistic waxwork.

She’s a vision, albeit one whose accent-soaked Hindi -- more unbearable than ever -- gets in the way of possible appreciation, and I wager she’d be an unnerving opponent on a card table, one both stealthy and distracting.  

Cast in a film, however, her blessings are less obvious. Particularly with a co-star not known for any acting talent either, in a film where a feeble script is built on constant, relentless revelations with artlessly expository dialogues.

Characters consistently point out the obvious, labelling things for the audience: one points to a Hanuman statue and calls it Hanuman, while a woman at a Thailand resort points out a Welcome To Thailand sign when a guest -- who may well be asking which floor he’s on -- asks where he is.

Sidharth Malhotra, who plays protagonist Jai Verma, stands around at a lavish pre-wedding party and tells his bride-to-be that he could have spent all this money on vedic mathematics research instead.  

Right. That is a creative decision in the same league as Chitrangda Singh teaching Economics at Oxford in the execrable Desi Boyz. Worse, perhaps, since Jai is a piece of work.  

The most imbecilic hero I remember in awhile, Jai is a math professor perpetually wondering what is going on. A slackjawed dullard, he walks around in a duh state, asking silly questions trying to keep up with his surroundings. Granted, director Nitya Mehra frequently (and inexplicably) pulls the rug out from under his feet, with a half-baked plot which is two parts A Christmas Carol and one part Groundhog Day, but there is no excuse for a hero this dismal and lunkheaded in any romantic film.  

We have to believe that this guy is a math-obsessed academic, and that his lady Diya (Kaif) is turned on by hearing numbers multiplied quickly, the way Jamie Lee Curtis melted for the Italian tongue in A Fish Called Wanda.

Nothing in this movie adds up, but the gist is that Jai -- annoyingly tentative and indecisive about marriage, in-laws and the woman in his life -- keeps getting jolted ahead into the future where things change and he remains the same stupid self, struggling to catch up.

It is all rather excruciating, despite the glossy settings and the casually futuristic detailing, largely because Mehra labours her point endlessly and her tubelight hero never seems to learn a thing. 

This is a hero who, minutes after he first leaps forward in time, decides to let his hair down and chill over a party song.

This is a hero who, recognising the potential for an affair that could wreck a marriage or two, goes ahead and tries it out first.

This is a hero who learns of a once-prosperous friend’s life going awry but doesn’t bother to help him with a warning.

This is a hero who, after assuming a day in court signals the wedding of his son, is stunned to see his wife there.

This is a hero who makes use of a second-chance by being needlessly rude to various people who may perhaps cross a line in the future, but are blameless at the time he’s throwing them shade.

This is a hero who calls his pregnant wife fat and then proceeds to make the car drive to hospital all about himself, later preferring to accost a pandit in a corridor rather than be there to hold his hand.  

And then... he calls himself a genius. 

Geniuses are in entirely short supply when it comes to this production, with a boisterous Ram Kapoor proving the least objectionable element.

Comedian Rohan Joshi is around -- carrying a briefcase into a hospital only because he wants people to think he’s a banker -- and, without the slightest chance to try out his comic chops, looks incredulous at the film he’s in. Perhaps he’s distracted by the music, by songs like Kho Gaye Hum Kahan which sound shamelessly like Karen O’s The Moon Song played through an Amit Trivedi filter.

Characters go through a lot in this film -- the Groundhog Day section of the script is the most tedious and the most contrived -- but none more than the audience. 

Diya, portrayed by Katrina as high-strung and shrill, is -- by my reckoning -- the most patient and understanding wife in the world. Married to an utter idiot, her outbursts are entirely justified, and come what may, she does put up with him and consents to loving him. Poor thing. And yet, even at the end of this unbearable film when things are finally, belatedly being set right, the fool husband complains about her impossible temper.

As if it’s her fault.

Poor show, Ms Mehra. If you could go back in time to set this film right, make something else instead.

Rediff Rating: