“ Not a review - Still a ***** rating for an honest effort to make sci-fi, and breaking regular stereo types of Bollywood. Yes, not the best but its criminal to not appreciate such efforts.”
The theme of time travel is not new in Indian cinema. From Fun2shh in 2003 to Baar Baar Dekho in 2016, the audiences have seen a large variety of sci-fi scripts in the last two decades. Sony LIV's JL50 from the rest of the lot is a certain degree of maturity in the way the concept of time travel has been dealt with.
Created, written and directed by Shalender Vyas, the plot of JL50 is summed up very well by the trailer itself. A flight, called JL50, crashed somewhere in northern Bengal. There were only two survivors of the crash, pilot Bhiu Ghosh (Ritika Anand) and professor Mitra (Piyush Mishra). This would have been just an ordinary plane crash, however, there is something extremely unusual: this flight took off 35 years ago from Kolkata airport. Both survivors have not aged one bit and look the same as they did 35 years ago. So the real mystery is where was the plane and its passengers for more than 3 decades?The cast also includes Pankaj Kapur, whose evergreen performance never fails to impress. We won't tell you how, but this character's development from the first to the fourth episode has been the most unpredictable thing in the show.
The CBI officer Shantanu (Abhay Deol) thinks this is all a setup, however, his interaction with Professor Das (Pankaj Kapur) invites the possibility of the impossible - time travel.Indian sci-fi has failed to do this sci-fi niche any justice. The over-dramatized scenes and an attempt to dumb down the science proves to be a major let down in Indian cinema. However, this shouldn't stop us from appreciating a genuine effort in making this genre of sci-fi more believable. The theme of time travel as stated before has been handled with much more maturity in JL50 than previously done. Here you won't find a magically appearing space ship or time travel happening on its own without any possible logic behind it. In fact, the web show succeeds to Indianise time travel, linking it to mythology, which brings in an interesting flavor.
JL50 finishes in a
jiffy, as it has just 4 episodes of roughly 25 minutes each and ends up being
more like a movie than a show. Due to the short length, no scene or episode
seems dragged. You actually don't even notice when the fourth episode has
arrived. But, on the other hand, the show ends up rushing through many plot
points which quite frankly deserve an entire episode altogether. For instance,
the explanation of the mythological link to time travel should have been
fleshed out more. This, along with many other instances make the plot seem
confusing, especially in the first 2 episodes.The ending of the show has been
cramped into merely 15-20 mins. There were loopholes as well which slipped into
the linear narrative.The editing of the episodes could have definitely been
better.
With such a good cast and plot, the show is a mixed
bag but an honest attempt at this sci-fi niche.
# Not
a review : Support good content. (save bollywood)
0 comments:
Post a Comment