Friday, July 4, 2008

Love Story 2050 - Great Effects, Disappointing Story!

I went to see this movie last night, so I could see the visual effects created by my old pals from Prime Focus, where I used to work last year around this time. I also did some trivial research for the effects to be created in Love Story 2050.

I am happy to say that my buddies did me proud... those were the best effects I've ever seen in a Bollywood movie. The matte paintings done in part by Yatin Mahambrey, modelling done in part by Akash Shivdasani, and the compositing done by Shaily Swarnkar were all superb. And I'm sure a good amount of credit goes to Merzin Tavaria, my ex boss and VFX Supe on the movie. Oh, and the costume styling in the future wasn't too bad either.

But it's a terrible shame that the first half set in present day Australia, was so boring, that you almost want to leave. The overacting is palpable, in sticking with the Bollywood formula. The characters are so simplified, you don't really want to empathize with them. Other questions that occurred to me during the movie were:

Why does the U Ya character of Boman Irani have to look like Albert Einstein?
Why does the villain character's energy ball weapon look suspiciously like Gandalph's in the Lord of the Rings trilogy?
Why was the Harman-asks-Priyanka-out-on-a-date scene copied from the Notebook movie, where Ryan Gosling's character threatens to jump off the ferris wheel (substituted here for a roller coaster) if Rachel McAdams character refuses to go on a date with him?
Couldn't the production team conceptualize better robots? Both robots were really stiff. After all, if they want us to believe Bombay has flying motorbikes and underwater homes in its future, wouldn't the robots be able to walk normally?
And most of all -- how could they so blatantly imitate Hrithik Roshan's dance moves?