Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya review: Shahid Kapoor and Kriti Sanon are likeable in a film lifted by the goofiness of its second half

Kriti Sanon and Shahid Kapoor in Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya, which released in theatres on February 9, 2024. (Image via X / @jammypants4)

“Kya robot hona buri baat hai?” Sifra, the female robot at the centre of Shahid Kapoor's painfully titled Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (TBMAUJ), asks the man who has fallen for her. The response she gets is coy, neither an expression of support nor a curt withdrawal of trust. She can read pain, disgust, happiness and even hormonal symptoms. What she can’t read, obviously, is morality, bias, jealousy, love, etc. Every imperfection that maybe makes us human. On the face of it, the film suggests a deep, critical analysis of this quality of being alive, of this loop of affection and grief that we keep repeating as if it were some sort of programming. Instead, the film pits the lifelessness of a robot against the intrusiveness of the great Indian family in a second half that brings out the sociable flavour, the comedic streak of a somewhat complicated question. It’s rowdy, messy and enjoyable if you like your AI conversations for effect as opposed to cause and thought.

Shahid Kapoor plays Aryan, a robotics engineer who resists his family’s absurd attempts to get him hitched. He lives with a joint family, led by the charming and increasingly scene-stealing Dharmendra. On the night of his engagement, Aryan decides to run away to his aunt in the US, a robotics pioneer, played by the reliable Dimple Kapadia. The chemistry between the two is a little awkward and overplayed, but where the film really begins is the coming together of Aryan and Sifra, an android, played convincingly by Kriti Sanon. Sanon’s near implausible beauty and perfectness is a contributing element to her role being, both metaphorically and ironically, stiff. Aryan falls for her coded servility, to the point that he decides to bring her back home to India and marry her.

The first half of the film spends its time establishing the relationship between Aryan and the machine he believes is ‘just right’ for him. On some level, it’s a precarious, but necessary, conversation. Do we really desire people who hold their own and challenge us or subservient figures who fold into whatever shape we want them to take? The answer, should we admit to it, might be the latter. There is even a conversation between the aunt and nephew, about the need for human-like robots and the gaps in humanity they might fill. The ones that trial and error just can’t. We’ve probably all been there, at points in our lives, where we’d just like someone to agree rather than argue. Unfortunately, it’s not an idea that the film spends too much time with.

Produced by Dinesh Vijan (Stree, Bhediya) and directed by Amit Joshi and Aradhana Sah, the film employs a massy, curt sense of humour. The premise, the gender of the robot and the ensuing conversations around gender-based obligations won’t sit well with woke sensibilities. There is this bro-gang dynamic that Aryan shares with a friend from his workplace, for example, where he openly berates the latter’s wife. “Robot hai par teri biwi se toh achi hai,” he says at one point, to which the friend immediately responds: “Point hai.” Again, it’s entitled and somewhat masculine in its origin, but also highly if crudely effective.

The love and the bark don’t always coalesce, though. On the one hand, this film wants to extract the chaotic pleasures of force-fitting a blank slate (a robot that can be rebooted) within the heavy-handed embrace of Indian tradition. On the other, it continues to wax lyrical about love and belonging. The former, for all its flaws, is joyous and fun. The latter, a bit of dull coating on a film that should have just stuck with parodying a quandary.

Placing an uncorrupted conscience in the arms of Indian bias sounds like comedic heaven. Which also means anything the creators could do, would seem short of a full scope. This is, after all, uncharted territory. Does a blank slate, for example, echo innocence, the age before politics scars, or does it also represent the capacity to rebel against programming you haven’t been given? After all, society, its behaviour topology is also a sort of code that everyone follows and expects. To this monolith, TBMAUJ offers totemic nudges, but rarely something nuanced.

Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (Image via X / @comicverseyt)

Kapoor’s film wastes a lot of plot, and takes a lot of time setting up its disorderly but somewhat satisfying second half. It’s saying something that the film is better off not taking itself too seriously. A lot more could have been done with this fascinating premise, but the creators’ vision makes room only for goofy, monosyllabic mannerisms and punchlines. There is nothing wrong with sticking to your guns, to follow that patterned grammar of family dysfunction, colourful cohorts and in-jokes. Except, maybe when you are the first mainstream film to tackle AI and robotics in the context of love and loneliness. You could do more than just feel the machine for signs of life and honk at its inhumanity. The questions that are never asked, are in fact the ones that require cautious, academic unwrapping. For a reckless bite of what is a sophisticated predicament, however, this film serves a dumbed down, but wildly Instagram-able feast.