Waqt

Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra, Shefali Shah, Boman Irani

What do you make of a ‘tearjerker’ that unintentionally makes you snigger during its very soppy, very ‘serious’ climax? Not even the God of all things Bollywood can do much to add weight here. If Amitabh Bachchan was hoping for a Baghban re-run at the box-office with his latest Big (hearted) Daddy act, there’s a tiny snag this time.

It’s this: The film follows the tested formula of melodrama being directly proportional to ‘family entertainment’. Yet, the best parts of Waqt are its ‘parallel track’ slapstick episodes that bear no direct connection to the central theme. Thank Boman Irani and Rajpal Yadav for that.

To be fair, Waqt has two saving graces: Credible performances, and the fact that the film at least tries to tell an unusual tale. The second bit perhaps has to do with the contemporary pan-Bollywood slant towards doling out something new, but director Vipul Shah loses that headstart by giving his storyline an abysmally mediocre – even shoddy – treatment. Shah could have easily avoided the obscenely magnified ‘ghar ghar ki kahani’ stereotype of the ’80s
(recall all those obsolete Jeetu-Jaya Pradha flicks).

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