Rich, bored, unloved, motherless son, Karan (Harman Baweja) falls in love with butterfly chasing, dear-dairy-journaling sweetax Sana (Priyanka Chopra). After some customary na-na-karte-pyar-tumhi-sai-kar-betha romance, and engagement is to follow. Karan introduces Sana to eccentric uncle Dr. Ya an ex-NASA scientist who is inventing a time machine. Sana expresses an interest in Mumbai in 2050 and sets the time-pod to 2050. Cutback to the puppy love and suddenly Sana dies in a freak accident.
Forlorn Karan and Sana’s little brother and sister with Dr. Ya travel to 2050 to bring the future, re-born Sana to 2008 and she will remember jaanam jaanam ka pyar with Karan.
The Karan-led gang travel to 2050 post-interval and enter the “special effects”. Papa Baweja’s vision of the future is a cut-paste collage from Hollywood blockbusters: I, Robot, Minority Report, Star Wars, Back to the Future, and the Fifth Element but the effects just plain fail to impress most viewers who have seen the above and the more recent fare of digital effects in Hollywood creations. The effects exist only to awe and tantalize gen-Xers who don’t watch Hollywood movies (if such a niche group exists).
Sana is now famous pop-star red-haired Zeisha and Mumbai seems to how become Hong Kong run by the Japanese. A silly, microchip villain wanting Dr. Ya’s time machine provides for some galactic flying car chases and much to an exhausted audience’s dismay Karan has to re-coo and re-woo Zeisha so she will remember their love from her last life and return to 2008. There is a talking teddy bear and feeling Robot , boobs sari-clad in Zeisha’s people-free life.
The movie is exhaustingly aggravating because Baweja khandan really believes this is A-class commercial cinema, you can see the belief permeate in the movie’s production-attitude and you want to sit-down and counsel them extensively, expensively.
Dr. Ya played by Boman Irani and Sana’s loud-loving Punju mother played by Archana Puran-Singh is ho-hum-hamy and I hope they got paid handsomely for their roles, I can’t expect them getting anything else from boy-Baweja’s debut debacle.
Priyanka Chopra has screen presence that out-rivals any of her rivals. The camera stupendously loves her in every shot. She makes bad acting look good, her motion-picture mojo intoxicates the screen but unfortunately bad writing will make its nasty self evident and eventually even Piggy Chops can’t mesmerize with her magic.
The story is so weak and contrived and the even worse writing can't force a connection to characters with an audience who wasn't looking for high-brow cinema but simply an evening of entertainment but wishing intubation once the shoddy story continues ad-nauseum.
But Love Story 2050 was Harman’s launch pad towards Bollywood stardom. This was an expensive screen test and I don’t think he completely failed it. There are plenty of stars in the Hindi film industry who don’t perform to par with the greats and then again it was also his first movie so maybe can learn the trade. Baweja is certainly not going away after his debut but he will have to overcome his identity crisis.
Boy-Baweja with his eerie resemblance to Hrithik, another cut and paste job, one can’t help wonder and then he speaks and all the similarities end. His dialogue delivery is high-school-girl-squeaky and oh his limp, expressionless eyes emote nothing except dumbfound-ness in every frame, shot, and scene.
Hrithik Roshan and an other authentic actors and actresses of the same category emote with their eye expressions; it is the difference between playing an imaginary, crazy character believably or a real-life type character without credibility.
Unfortunately Boy-Baweja in Love Story 2050 is just not a natural and he will have to work less on the deltoids and more on the dialogue delivery. Sure he can dance, fight, look-decently attractive to some I suppose, but Pappu can’t act, saala.
Not in 2008 and not in Love Story 2050.
