He thought life was a simple equation. Jai plus Diya equals love. But everything is about to change. Baar Baar Dekho featuring Sidharth Malhotra and Katrina Kaif, has gained good traction online for its high concept. But is it really high concept? Though debutant director Nitya Mehra has insisted that it’s not a sci-fi or time travel film, the trailer has really made us wonder. Malhotra’s character Jai starts ageing by leaps and bounds – 10 days on the first day, two years on the second, and 16 years on the third day – and a worry gnaws at him, whether he will die on the fourth day. What does he do to save his love and life?
This premise strangely looks highly inspired by not one, not two, but multiple films that have graced popular entertainment in the past few decades. No, no, we’re not implying plagiarism, just that, this trailer reminds us of many such similar tales. Let’s have a look.
Groundhog Day (1993)
Harold Ramis’ comic masterpiece is about Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray), an arrogant Pittsburgh TV weatherman who, during an assignment covering the annual Groundhog Day event in Pennsylvania, finds himself living the same day over and over and over again. He is the only person who knows that he’s stuck in a time-loop, but the film refuses to reveal the cause of it. He indulges in hedonism, he sinks in despair, he goes for self-destruction, until he begins to re-examine his life, and learns to become a better person, on the road to redemption. From cynicism to sincerity, Murray pulls it off effortlessly to display his broad range in his greatest role.
About Time (2013)
A hat tip to Groundhog Day by the honcho of the Britcom, Richard Curtis’ About Time has a young man Tim Lake (played by Domhnall Gleeson) who discovers on his 21st birthday that the men of his family can travel through time. Many things are not allowed while using this gift, but not when you’re perfecting your love-life. So you know, Tim falls for Mary (played by Rachel McAdams) and starts reliving the moment until he turns bumbled romantic disasters into bumbled romantic victories for the perfect love story. Because it’s from the writer of Love Actually and Notting Hill, mush is all over to goo you out.
Click (2006)
An overworked family man, Michael Newman (played by Adam Sandler) gets a remote-control device from an oddball inventor with the magical ability to manipulate, not only his TV set, but his life. He can mute voices, he can rewind, and the most tempting feature of all, he can fast-forward through the boring stuff. But the universal remote turns out to be more universal than he actually bargained for, causing him to miss not months, but years of his life. And he learns it’s a wonderful life. Since it is Sandler, you have his trademark cannon of crude humour and gross-out gags. Not very wonderful for sure.
Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)
In this film, Peggy Sue (played by Kathleen Turner) attends her 25th high school class reunion, passes out, and when she wakes up, she finds herself transported to her teenage days in a very Back to the Future style. Armed with foreknowledge, our heroine begins to understand the decisions that have led to her crisis, and learns how acceptance goes a long way in solving life’s problems. A deft balance between screwball comedy and sentimental tears, director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) turns a time travel story into a charming fable of life’s important lessons.
(The writer is a journalist and a screenwriter who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. Follow him on Twitter: @RanjibMazumder)