Action Replay - A bumpy, painful ride to the 70s
This one promises a blast but turns out to be whimper. Taking cue from the retro trend, Vipul Shah adapts his Gujarati play and goes Back To The Future all over again! He ropes in Nitin Desai to create a classic 70s vehicle but doesn't apparently know how to drive it. He spends so much time exploring the rear view that he simply misses that the vehicle needs to run on today's roads. It turns out to be a bumpy, rather painful ride that fails in it primary goal: to keep you entertained.Farah Khan showed how past can effectively ride on today's writing in Om Shaanti Om, which incidentally, was also a Deepavali release. A young boy (Aditya Roy Kapoor) gets hold of his girl friend's grandfather's (Randhir Kapoor) time machine and goes back in time to save his parents (Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai) rancorous marriage.The idea is to make them fall in love at a younger age so that they don't bicker at the arrangement later. In the younger avatar, he finds his father, Kishan as a buck-toothed, under confident, fashion disaster and his mother is a stylish tomboy, Mala, who loves to make the life of Kishan hell. As you can guess, the rest of the story is about how the son makes his father stylish and confident so that he could tame his to-be mother. Yes there is another suitor (Rannvijay Singh in the competition as well, who wants to impress Mala by singing in both male and female voice. Good idea, bad execution. Vipul has recreated the 70s Bombay with great detail. Nylon prints, polka dots, flared pants, all of it sends us back on the fashion curve. His little comments on Emergency, wide roads, love marriages have enough potential to let the nostalgia cast its spell but unfortunately right ingredients and right look don't always ensure a tasty dish. Vipul hasn't seasoned it with a taut screenplay, crispy dialogues and lilting music. The indifferent performances make it worse.
Akshay Kumar has virtually played all the shades of a simpleton and one doesn't feel he has any ace left up his sleeve to surprise us. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan tries hard to break her ice maiden image but fails to create the contrast that the script expected of her. She looks fabulous in songs but humour doesn't come naturally to her.
Om Puri and Kirron Kher are wasted. Apart from one or two one liners, the humour sounds plotted and the plot appears planned. The unadulterated touch that we expect from Akshay Kumar-Vipul Shah combine is sorely missing. There is no genuine drama or conflict as every conflict gets resolved rather conveniently and the drab climax goes on an on.
