November 6, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): Film: Action Replayy

Starring: Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Aditya Roy Kapoor, Rannvijay Singh, Neha Dhupia, Om Puri, Kirron Kher Randhir Kapoor, Rajpal Yadav

Music: Pritam

Director: Vipul Amrutlal Shah

Rating: Critics 2/5, Viewers: 4/5

Action Replayy has all the right ingredients to make a movie work, an impressive list of names, and a good story of a boy who wishes to travel to the future and instead gets to the past, a love story plotted in the 70s but it all gets lost. Vipul Amrutlal Shah, tries hard to mix and match so many things in the film that none of it comes across convincingly, neither the characters nor the plot or the dialogue.

This was not the first time Akshay played a nerd who transforms himself into the hot dude; he has done that before in Jaan-E-Mann. So apart from the 70s looks there was not much for the actor to offer in the role of Kishan. Aishwarya looks impeccable in the long shots but once again lacks in performance and some of the powerhouse performers like Om Puri, Kirron Kher and Rajpal Yadav are wasted in the film. What does work is the art direction and recreating the era of 70s Mumbai?

Unfortunately, for the critics, however, a dash of a Gujarati play, a dash of Hollywood film back to the Future and The Hitch with the gusto of the 70s fails to work. However, if the response of the audience is anything to go by on the blogs, the film is working as they would like to rate it 4 out of 5. Now only the coming weeks can tell how good the film will do in the box office.

--Sampurn Wire