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Saj72278
Reviews
Love Story 2050 (2008)
It's a bad attempt at a blockbuster, or a good, guilty-pleasure "bad" movie.
I can see how if you actually paid money to see this in the theater and were expecting to view the first major Bollywood blockbuster, you would be very disappointed, and a 0-2 star rating would be understandable. However, my husband and I watched this last night on Netflix, so our expectations going into it were quite different than those of other reviewers.
I don't know how my husband decided on this film other than it had to be listed under Sci-Fi, because otherwise he would never choose something like this. I walked in the room as the characters were breaking into song for the first time and laughed. "You're watching a musical?!" "I don't know, this is the first time it went this way." I expected him to immediately turn the movie off after the schmaltzy, young lovers suddenly broke out into a schmaltzier song, but for some reason we kept watching... and watching... all the way through the entire odd, even at times excruciating, three-hour production. Why?
The hero and heroine of the story, two young lovers named Sana and (I can't recall the boy's name), were simply flat characters, but so are every prince and princess of all the classic fairy tales as they were originally written. It doesn't mean such a story can't be enjoyed, it just means you have to put more of yourself into it, or appreciate it on a more metaphorical level. Despite a lack of character development and a lot of predictability, we still wanted to see exactly how the happy ending was going to play out.
The original concept of this film is great - a modern-day, Bollywood interpretation of The Time Machine, except instead of futilely, repeatedly returning to the past to try to keep his lover from dying, the young beau overcomes that snag by retrieving her from the future instead (in reincarnated form, of course). And there's a nice, little paradoxical twist thrown in. Our hero who was the thrill-seeking loner turned to mush by the sweet, goody-two-shoes Sana, is now the softy who has to win the hardened, self-absorbed, doesn't-need-anybody future Sana (now named Zeisha) all over again.
The main problem of this film is its complete lack of editing. It's like a 90-minute teen romantic comedy and a 90-minute Sci-Fi/Action flick pasted together. If they could've stripped the romantic development down to just the basics, running at around half an hour, and then spent an hour on the Sci-Fi and action, this could potentially have truly been a Bollywood blockbuster. The hero's father and other elements should have been cut from the beginning, and the villain, Dr. Hoshi, was completely unnecessary to the second half, for example. The stereotypical, genius scientist uncle and generic siblings I can deal with. (They actually fit with this type of storytelling.)
So, long story short, a great Sci-Fi/Romantic story concept that was beautifully rendered is botched by poor or nonexistent editing. What could have been a Bollywood blockbuster is reduced to at best a guilty-pleasure "bad" movie, as there are parts that are enjoyable if cheesy, if you can sit still that long. Love Story 2050 gets an A for concept, an A for effort, an F for editing, a B for effects and a C for everything else - so I think 6/10 is maybe a tad generous, but overall fair.