Love Story 2050: a futuristic stinker
Nirpal Dhaliwal
Monday July 14, 2008
India's film industry must make more absolute stinkers than the rest of the world combined. You won't get a better example of the brain-insulting garbage it can churn out than Love Story 2050, Bollywood's answer to Barbarella, Back To The Future and Beverly Hills 90210 - all rolled into one.
It's a movie industry equivalent of a corner-shop, directed by Harry Baweja, produced by his wife and starring their son, Harman - who no doubt had to give up his evenings and weekends to work on it for free.
Harman plays Karan, a spoilt rich-kid wanker who struts around wearing stone washed jeans and a henna-tinted bouffant, constantly exclaiming "Oh shit!" in English to show what a hip and modern, fast-talking rebel he is. Mixed up by his mother's death and neglected by a father who prefers making money, Karan loves crashing his dad's expensive cars as well as "extreme sports, break-dancing and hip-hop" and everything else wankers like doing. He also has a habit of wearing sweatbands on his wrists and even on his fingers - probably to relieve the injuries he's sustained from wanking too much.
While out jogging in the park in a headband and sleeveless tank top, Karan spots the beautiful wide-eyed Sana, happily playing with a butterfly, and is smitten. Played by the Bambi-faced Priyanka Chopra, Sana gleams with a dark, moist muscavado sweetness that had me craning towards the screen wanting to lick her. For the first half of the movie she's the only thing worth watching.
Karan wins her heart and charms her family and the two become engaged. But while out having ice cream one night, tragedy strikes when Sana is hit by a truck while crossing the road. "Oh shit!" cries Karan, leaping in slow motion from his convertible like a complete wanker. There follows a disturbingly graphic scene in which Sana, her hair drenched in blood, twitches and splutters her final words of affection while Karan gnashes his teeth and screws his eyes in anguish.
Luckily, his scientist uncle has invented a time machine in which they can to travel to the future to find Sana's reincarnation. The film then shifts from its setting in present-day Brisbane (don't ask why), to the poorly animated, slum-free, high-tech and wholly uninteresting Mumbai of 2050, where Sana has been reborn as Zeisha, a flame-haired, blue-eyed rock-chick with a penchant for ghastly metallic nail varnish. "A woman of the future, talked about in the past", she is precisely the trashy, self-regarding hussy Karan was born to be with.
With Sana having morphed into this tasteless tramp, the film offers nothing but bad acting, boring songs and sub-Blake's Seven special effects. Zeisha's talking robot teddy looks like it came straight out of Toys-R-Us. The musical routines feel thoroughly contrived, inserted into the film only to meet the industry format. But they provide an amusing diversion as Karan makes a spectacular twat of himself with his high-octane body-popping, flapping like a hapless cod out of water.
The critics universally gave this film the finger and attendances have been poor. There were only a handful in my cinema; half way through most were asleep, while a turbaned Sikh bloke in my row was feverishly making out with his girlfriend.
The movie fails not just because of its sheer badness but also its vision of the future. It's a future in which India is nothing but an emulation of MTV crassness. The only character that resonated with the audience, drawing laughs whenever she appeared, was Sana's Punjabi mother, a good-natured but bossy and interfering cow - a figure any Indian can recognise.
That Love Story 2050 is a flop is reassuring. Despite their love of escapism, Indians want their fantasy worlds to be thoroughly Indian ones. Whatever hopes they might have, they don't want their future to be a shabby imitation of the West.
Nirpal Dhaliwal
Monday July 14, 2008
India's film industry must make more absolute stinkers than the rest of the world combined. You won't get a better example of the brain-insulting garbage it can churn out than Love Story 2050, Bollywood's answer to Barbarella, Back To The Future and Beverly Hills 90210 - all rolled into one.
It's a movie industry equivalent of a corner-shop, directed by Harry Baweja, produced by his wife and starring their son, Harman - who no doubt had to give up his evenings and weekends to work on it for free.
Harman plays Karan, a spoilt rich-kid wanker who struts around wearing stone washed jeans and a henna-tinted bouffant, constantly exclaiming "Oh shit!" in English to show what a hip and modern, fast-talking rebel he is. Mixed up by his mother's death and neglected by a father who prefers making money, Karan loves crashing his dad's expensive cars as well as "extreme sports, break-dancing and hip-hop" and everything else wankers like doing. He also has a habit of wearing sweatbands on his wrists and even on his fingers - probably to relieve the injuries he's sustained from wanking too much.
While out jogging in the park in a headband and sleeveless tank top, Karan spots the beautiful wide-eyed Sana, happily playing with a butterfly, and is smitten. Played by the Bambi-faced Priyanka Chopra, Sana gleams with a dark, moist muscavado sweetness that had me craning towards the screen wanting to lick her. For the first half of the movie she's the only thing worth watching.
Karan wins her heart and charms her family and the two become engaged. But while out having ice cream one night, tragedy strikes when Sana is hit by a truck while crossing the road. "Oh shit!" cries Karan, leaping in slow motion from his convertible like a complete wanker. There follows a disturbingly graphic scene in which Sana, her hair drenched in blood, twitches and splutters her final words of affection while Karan gnashes his teeth and screws his eyes in anguish.
Luckily, his scientist uncle has invented a time machine in which they can to travel to the future to find Sana's reincarnation. The film then shifts from its setting in present-day Brisbane (don't ask why), to the poorly animated, slum-free, high-tech and wholly uninteresting Mumbai of 2050, where Sana has been reborn as Zeisha, a flame-haired, blue-eyed rock-chick with a penchant for ghastly metallic nail varnish. "A woman of the future, talked about in the past", she is precisely the trashy, self-regarding hussy Karan was born to be with.
With Sana having morphed into this tasteless tramp, the film offers nothing but bad acting, boring songs and sub-Blake's Seven special effects. Zeisha's talking robot teddy looks like it came straight out of Toys-R-Us. The musical routines feel thoroughly contrived, inserted into the film only to meet the industry format. But they provide an amusing diversion as Karan makes a spectacular twat of himself with his high-octane body-popping, flapping like a hapless cod out of water.
The critics universally gave this film the finger and attendances have been poor. There were only a handful in my cinema; half way through most were asleep, while a turbaned Sikh bloke in my row was feverishly making out with his girlfriend.
The movie fails not just because of its sheer badness but also its vision of the future. It's a future in which India is nothing but an emulation of MTV crassness. The only character that resonated with the audience, drawing laughs whenever she appeared, was Sana's Punjabi mother, a good-natured but bossy and interfering cow - a figure any Indian can recognise.
That Love Story 2050 is a flop is reassuring. Despite their love of escapism, Indians want their fantasy worlds to be thoroughly Indian ones. Whatever hopes they might have, they don't want their future to be a shabby imitation of the West.
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| a much better film to watch |
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| my heroe, right after aamir khan |
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