Waqt - The Race Against Time, (2005)

A bout of the flu and, more importantly, a string of mediocre movies have prevented me from posting lately. Adaptation, although I appreciate its very nature, confounded me (I love Susan Orlean’s work, which made Meryl Streep’s portrayal very weird to me). I found Fever Pitch, which I watched this morning while recovering from a vomitrocious evening, rather delightful. I rooted for the aliens in War of the Worlds (if anything, this movie led me to some very philosophical, existential questions about the nature of the universe – primarily, why are aliens always nekkid?).

Then Netflix heard that I was sick and sent me a get-well present. I finally got Waqt – The Race Against Time, which had been sitting at the top of my queue for fifty years. Worth the wait?

Totally not.

I was expecting to see the same old Bollywood love-hate father-son relationship rehashed, and I knew it was about rich people, and I had been warned about the scrolling ads, but somehow I thought that I could get over it. I thought maybe the movie (based on a Gujrati play) would amount to more than that. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. There was nothing new about the story – it was Ek Rishtaa with a little more gloss and fancier saris. The rich thing – God was that annoying. There was a particular discussion about bedrooms (“I have twelve at my house but you only have seven… but poor people make do with two… I guess that’s not so bad…”) that made me realize that I wasn’t going to enjoy the movie. It was bad, but not even laughably bad, just plain bad. Pretty to look at, but there was nothing going on upstairs.

Akshay’s ten years too old to pull the whiny, spoiled Aditya off either likably or believably. AB’s the chief plumber – when he’s not crying melodramatically he’s invoking tears in others. Shefali Shah is pretty… pretty useless. Priyanka Chopra (a.k.a. “the Uterus”) is there for song picturizations and baby-making only.

If this movie indicates anything, then I think Akshay is seriously considering a career change. He's trying to either be a stunt man (after pulling off "the world's most dangerous stunt") or Madhuri Dixit:

It must be seen to be believed.

I can think of 6,000 better ways to spend three hours, like individually plucking every strand of hair from my body or finding a way to get the flu again. Avoid, yaar. Don't say you weren't warned.