Mindless comedies are the flavour of the season and this Diwali we have not one but two such movies hitting the theatres. After ‘Golmaal 3’ I went to watch ‘Action Replay’ as I have always liked Vipul Shah movies especially ‘Aankhen’,’Waqt’ and ‘Namaste London’.
‘Action Replay’ like Vipul’s first movie ‘Aankhen’ is also adapted from a Gujrati play with the same name and it is nowhere closely identical or remotely inspired by Brad Pitt starrer ‘Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. It is definitely a Sci-fi movie where one of the principal character travels back in time to set his parents love life in place so that their present crisis can be resolved. It does sound like the english movie ‘Back to the Future’ but the similarity just ends there.
Bunty [Aditya Roy Kapur] loves his girlfriend Tanya, but runs a mile whenever she mentions marriage. His phobia with matrimony stems from his parents Kishen [Akshay Kumar] and Mala’s [Aishwarya Rai Bachchan] acrimonious marriage. But now Bunty is in a fix. Tanya’s grandfather, Professor Anthony Gonsalves [Randhir Kapoor], has given him an ultimatum — get married to Tanya or stop seeing her. Bunty knows that unless he does something fast, his dreams of living happily ever after with Tanya will bite the dust.

As Bunty’s surprise party for his parent’s 35th wedding anniversary deteriorates into yet another explosive fight between Kishen and Mala, he decides to turn back the clock and rewrite Kishen and Mala’s destiny and alter their disastrous marriage into a romantic affair of the hearts.

And how does he do that? By using the professor’s time machine to travel back in time. To a time when Kishen and Mala were not married… To a time when Kishen’s father Rai Bahadur [Om Puri] and Mala’s mother Bholi Devi [Kirron Kher] were sworn enemies… To a time when Kishen was a certified nerd, bullied merciless by Kundan [Rannvijay]… To a time when Mala couldn’t stand the sight of Kishen and took great pleasure in ragging him silly.

Bunty has to transform his father from a wimp into an eligible bachelor and his mother from a tomboy into the epitome of feminine grace. Then he has to attempt an impossible task — make them fall in love with each other. And finally he has to make his grandparents agree to their love marriage.

When a movie with concept like time travel is attempted then it’s imperative that the writing should be so persuasive that the viewer is influenced into believing that people can travel into the past or future. Here if the director had used few scenes to give some more information on time travel then it would have enhanced the impact of the story, but whatever minimal is said about time travel in the film doesn’t register effectively. The time machine looks tacky and tawdry and does very little in convincing you that this piece of scrap can really transport you into a departed era, 1975 in this case.

In the acting department Akshay, Aishwarya, Aditya Roy Kapoor and Rannvijay did a very good job. Rajpal Yadav, Om Puri and Kiron Kher are good in their respective roles while Neha Dhupia and Randhir Kapoor are totally wasted. Sudeepa who acts as Aditya’s girlfriend doesnt have much to do apart from looking good a bad role to debut with.

Full marks to Nitin Desai for creating the 70’s era come alive in the form of sets. The dress designing department has done a good job alongwith Pritam who has given a very 70’ish music to the movie.
Vipul Shah does a good job but compared to his previous directorial ventures Action Replay is a bit of a let down. However on a whole Action Replay is a very good time pass movie for a weekend at the box office you have to wait and watch.

Highly Recommended 🙂

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