Action Replayy lacks Art and Soul

By Anant Mathur (November 16, 2010)

SPOILER ALERT:
If you haven't seen Action Replayy please do not read on, certain parts of the story may be revealed in this post.
 

After watching Action Replayy one thing is certain - the director is a moron. Vipul Amrutlal Shah, if you don't know anything about science don't make a film about time travel. Travelling back in time should not be about a fashion statement. It's fine that you're trying hard to cover up the fact that you've ripped off the story from Back to the Future (and don’t want to get sued) but do a good job of it. This film is so bad I don't even know where to begin.

When I watch Back to the Future I know exactly where the money from the $19 million budget was spent. Watching Action Replayy it's hard to imagine it cost 65 crores (according to Komal Nahta) to make it. Action Replayy should cost no more than 4-5 crores to make (not including salaries of Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai); there are no lavish sets, no mind-blowing special effects and certainly no story or extraordinary song sequences. So, where did the money go? Did Vipul Amrutlal Shah keep the money or did he pay Aishwariya Rai and Akshay Kumar 15 crores each as salary?

Back to the Future is a classic and one of my favourite films. In fact, I'm one of the biggest fans of Back to the Future and the time travel genre in particular. I can still remember the first time I saw Back to the Future, I was 11 years old and I saw it at my cousin’s house. It became an instant favorite of mine, I have seen it countless number of time since then. The great thing about Back to the Future is the details that went into scripting it. And that's the most important element missing from this farce called Action Replayy.

In Back to the Future, the mall - where Marty first sees the time machine in 1985 - is called Twin Pines Mall. When he travels to 1955 he ends up on a farm that stood in place of the Mall (since the mall culture hadn’t started yet). Old Man Peabody owned the farm and had two pine trees, hence the name Twin Pines Mall. When Marty leave the farm in his DeLorean he runs over one of the pine trees and destroys it. Finally, when gets back to the future the mall is now called Lone Pine Mall the name changed because on of the pine trees was destroyed. Remember, Statler Toyota, it was a Toyota dealership in Back to the Future in 1985 – they were promoting the 4x4 Marty wanted. When Marty reaches 1955 the dealership is called Statler Studebaker, since Toyota didn’t exist back then. Its details like this which makes Back to the Future special. There are thousands of little details like this in Back to the Future but none in Action Replayy.
 

Bunty (Aditya Roy Kapoor) uses the time machine built by his girlfriend’s Grandfather (Randhir Kapoor) to arrive in 1975. The time machine crash lands and is destroyed; yet at the end of the film it looks brand new as Bunty goes back to 2010. That's all you see or hear about the time machine. There's no explanation of how it got fixed or who fixed it. At the end of the film, when Bunty is going back, Randhir Kapoor appears with the time machine and waves goodbye to Bunty as he leaves – WTF! Why is Randhir Kapoor of 1975 helping Bunty? How does he know Bunty is telling the truth about Tanya, his granddaughter isn't even born yet? How does Bunty convince him to fix the time machine? And if Randhir Kapoor had the technology to fix the time machine in 1975, why didn’t he build it back then? None of this is explained.

When Bunty arrives in 1975, at first he isn’t sure if he made it. I’m still not sure if he made it because all the scenery looks exactly the same in 1975 as it does today which is impossible. I mean show me that where buildings stand in 2010, it’s a slum area in 1975 or something, so I know he’s in a different era. I mean, Vipul Amrutlal Shah, didn’t even show any old cars, occasionally you see a old Ambassador or a fiat or a Cadillac, but not in bunches. In any time travel film when the protagonist arrives in the past or the future, the first thing the audience notices is the difference in scenery, technology and the cars/transportation – there’s none of that in Action Replayy.
 

I moved from India when I was a kid and went back for the first time after 12 years. In 12 years, everything had changed drastically – it literally felt like I travelled 12 years into the future. There were parks where it used to be empty grounds; homes which were 1 story high now had 3 stories. Several shops had gotten bigger while others were no longer there. Even the small temple which used to be in my neighborhood was now exponentially larger. There were multiple new models of cars, technology was at par with the west and architecturally - the new buildings were beautiful. If all this can happened in a 12 year period from the late 1980s to the late 1990s - you can image how much would change from 1975 to 2010 especially in a big city like Mumbai. 

The buildings, in Action Replayy, should’ve looked different, roads weren’t that wide in the 1970s and shops were different. Showing an old movie theatre doesn’t tell me that Bunty is in the 1970s – it could just be an old theatre. Show what has changed - where is the open land where buildings now stand in 2010? There’s no reference to things like this.

There’s a scene in Action Replayy, in 1975, where we are shown a sign for a café called Bollywood Café. The term Bollywood was coined by Bevinda Collaco sometime in the late 1970s. It wasn’t in common use until the 1990s, so it is highly doubtful that there would be a café called Bollywood Café in 1975 Mumbai. How Bollywood filmmakers call themselves filmmakers is beyond me, not an ounce of research goes into their films. As bad as some Hollywood films maybe, there’s no doubt the research that goes into them. In Hollywood, even a film with a budget of 2 million is well researched, yet a 65 crore Bollywood film can’t even get simple facts right!
 

One more thing that doesn’t make sense is, in the future, Bunty looks to be in his mid 20s, which means he was probably born in the mid-1980s because his parents, who didn’t get along, didn’t have him for a few years after marriage, which is fine. But once he changes the past one would think that his parents, who are now in love, wouldn’t wait 10 years to have a kid, so he should be a lot older. In Back To The Future, this is not an issue, because Marty was the third born and the parents didn’t hate each other when they got married originally. But when you’re an only child, like Bunty, things could change drastically when you mess with time travel. Also, if his parents are in love with each other now, wouldn’t they have had more kids in the new future? And if Bunty is born a few years earlier who’s to say that he wouldn’t be a girl in the future? Has Vipul Shah heard of the Butterfly Effect? I doubt it.

Action Replayy would've been a better film if director Vipul Amrutlal Shah presented it as a stand-up comedy act with the lead actors hitting all the punch lines at the right time as in Comedy Circus. A film about time travel needs a solid story even if time travel is a means to an end and not the important part of the story.
 

In Back To The Future, all the music was songs of the 1950s - the era Marty gets sent to - and it gave the film authenticity. In our desi version all the music is from today, there’s no mention of any songs from the 1970s not even in the background. And why are they singing and dancing to hip hop/rap in the 1970s as if everyone knows it?

It is also never explained where Bunty is staying in 1975 when he first arrives or how he ends up in Kishen’s house?

When I watched Action Replayy, I could feel that I was loosing brain cells from the sheer shock of how ridiculous this film is. I kid you not, once this film ended, I actually had a headache. A monkey could have written a better script than what’s presented here.
 

Instead of thinking of adding an extra “y” to replay, so your film shows up first in a google search, perhaps money would've been better spent thinking of a good (I'm not even saying great) but at the least a good story. There’s an art to making a good time travel movie, Back to the Future, The Time Machine, The Philadelphia Experiment, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Primer, Time Bandits and even Time Cop are great examples of this. Action Replayy not only lacks soul but there’s no art factor to speak of – unless you want to call today’s clothing with bell bottoms and large collars on them, art – I don’t know any common man or woman who dressed like Kishen (Akshay Kumar) and Mala (Aishwarya Rai) in the 1970s. And I'm pretty sure pimp coats were not worn in Mumbai during that era.

You know, I never thought I'd see a worst time travel movie than Love Story 2050, but Action Replayy makes Love Story 2050 look like a masterpiece.

Well, that’s all I wish to say about Action Replayy ‘cause I can feel the headache coming back and I don’t want to make this post 50,000 words long by talking about the countless other worthless things that are wrong with it – like the Yoda T-shirt and how Bunty’s afro disappears in the middle of the film and then comes back a few scenes later. One thing is for sure, I'm never replayying this film ever again. By the way, is it just me or does Action Replayy make it sound like it should be about cricket.

© Anant Mathur. All Rights Reserved.