Love Story 2050 + Haal-e-Dil

Recently, two horrible movies came out, both featuring actors with huge industry connections. Due to their ear-bleeding horrible-ness, I figured I could discuss them in a single post, to somehow reduce the pain :D Both movies are essentially a waste of time for everyone involved, including the viewer :)

Screamingly terrible
Title: Love Story 2050
Year: 2008
Cast: Harman Baweja, Priyanka Chopra, Boman Irani.

Harman plays a super rich, whiney young man whose dad is working hard to let his son live without working. However, Harman doesn't appreciate this, wants love, and doesn't help his dad at work, which he probably should have.

Harman meets Priyanka, loves and then loses her (how?- watch the movie). Via some REALLY idiotic reasoning, he figures the only way to get her back is to go to the year 2050 :S

Post interval, in 2050, we see Harry Bawja's interpretation of all that India can achieve in the next 40 years. In the next 40 years, the country will:
1- Have time travel
2- Flying: cars, trams, stadiums.
3- Terrible fashion sense- everyone will include a lot of silver in their apparel. People will also wear Japanese anime-style clothing from the 2000s- thereby still being technically 40 years behind the times in fashion.
4- Bombay will be remodeled to look somewhat like a NYC/HK hybrid.
5- The re-modelers of the city will borrow heavily from "The 5th element" , "I Robot" and "Star Wars," with a smattering of the Terminator movies.

As Banno mentions in her fabulous post on this, Harman is surprisingly efficient in Bombay, despite it being a different era and a new city/country for him. He wears a lot of Hritik-like clothes and dances a lot- but can he find Priyanka and get her back to 2008?
I just wish they would remain in the future.

Pros:
1- Harman is cute, and I feel he could act, given the chance. I have seen him in a you-tube interview, and he was surprisingly natural and non-Hritik-like. Hopefully he will stop doing movies with his dad, just be himself and revive his career.
2- Priyanka is lovely as always....

Cons:
1- .... however, despite all her loveliness, Priyanka does not move me with her acting at all.
2- Horrible dialogues.
3- Dilip Tahil (plays Harman's dad) is reduced to a caricature like cameo- awful awful awful.
4- That horrible pink bear Priyanka carries makes me want to brain someone. It is beyond ugly, and is dubbed by a grown man/woman/who-knows-what speaking squeakily. eugh.
5- Terrible editing. A lot of unnecessary time is spent in the 1st half of the movie, with a long and painful witnessing of Harman wooing Priyanka. That could have been cut by half.
6- Also as Banno says, Harman's passing resemblance to Hritik is exaggerated to ridiculous lengths. He could have been fine being himself, but since he dances and even wears clothes like Hritik (1 outfit is the same Hritik's from "Lakshya"'s "main aisa hi hoon"- even the same hair), its like clobbering the viewer on the head with the "Hritik"ness.

Conclusion: Harman may survive the ignominy of this movie, but you don't have to tolerate the pain of watching it.
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"Comatose-in-pain" bad
Title: Love Story 2050
Year: 2008
Cast: Amita Pathak, Adhyayan SUman, Nakul Mehta- not that you should care.

Kumar Mangat showcases his daughter Amita Pathak in this movie- the poor girl is not an actor by any definition, and neither are the 2 guys, Nakul Mehta and Adhyayan Suman (Shekhar Suman's son) stuck with her in this clunker.

Nakul is a singer who gets on a train w/ Amita and then earnestly begins his wooing, much to her apparent disgust. After spending 1/2 the movie aping "Jab We Met," they land up somewhere (Nainital? I forget) where we find her 1st love, Adhyayan has been dead awhile and she cant forget him. Can Nakul bring Amita around? Can she forget Adhyayan? Do you care? Why?

Pros:
Hah!

Cons:
Everything and everyone.

Conclusion: "Jab We Met," on downers- gone seriously seriously wrong.

Thoughts:
I think I am extremely harsh on new Bollywood, and far far more forgiving if watching stuff through the 90s. For some reason, I hold the past 10 years to a higher standard, which may be somewhat unfair. On the other hand, technology has improved a lot in the past decade, and therefore I do not think it is so wrong to expect better product than we are being currently provided.

While the technology is here, it is either being used incorrectly (ie bad animation, bad effects), or if used effectively, then the basic plot, script and acting fall. Very few movies, seem to not fall in either of these 2 traps, which I think definitely affects my appreciation of new movies. Through the 70s, and even later, Bollywood used almost zero effects-ability and still delivered great products. Despite all the flubs, the "fun" element was never lost, but now I miss that.