I Dated a Robot!

Genre in Bollywood tends to be kind of fluid.  That's the old-fashioned masala formula; start with romance, add a heaping helping of family drama, mix in action and broad comedy to taste, and add a little spice with a sexy item number or two.  Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (2024) takes that genre mixing a step further.  It's not the first movie to mix Bollywood romance with science fiction, but it does commit to the genre blend instead of just applying sci-fi trappings to a typical romance.

Aryan Agnihotri (Shahid is a robotics engineer working in a near-future Mumbai.  He's handsome, charming, very skilled, and very, very single, which is a problem for his very traditional family, and especially his mother Sharmila (Anubha Fatehpuria).  They really want him to get married and start producing grandbabies, but Aryan is picky.  he's waiting for the perfect woman, and no one really understands apart from his cool grandpa Jai (Dharmendra).

Aryan accepts an invitation from E-Robotics CEO Urmila Shukla (Dimple Kapadia) to visit the corporate headquarters in California and see the big secret project she's been working on, and he cheerfully accepts, both because it's a chance to get away from his family's nagging and because Urmila is his aunt; they've always been close and it's a chance to spend some time together while working on cool robotics stuff.

Shortly after Aryan arrives, Urmila is called away to Belgium, leaving Aryan alone with nothing to do.  Fortunately her assistant Sifra (Kriti Sanon) is there to take care of him, and Sifra is . . . perfect.  She's beautiful, brilliant, highly efficient, and a fantastic cook.  She claims to speak every language, though Aryan has to teach her slang terms.  And she's clearly into him, flirting up a storm.  Aryan flirts back, and they spend the night together.

In accordance with the rules of comedy, Urmila returns the next morning as Aryan is preparing beans on toast.  Aryan tries to distract her or at least keep her out of his bedroom but Urmila marches in and discovered Sifra on Aryan's bed, unresponsive and not breathing.  Aryan wants to call a doctor, but Urmila calmly plugs Sifra back in and Aryan finally realizes that he slept with a robot.

Aryan might be freaking out, but Urmila is oddly calm.  In fact she's thrilled; she reveals that she arranged to be called away as a test, to see if Sifra could pass as a human, and it was a great success.  Aryan is less thrilled as he realizes that the woman he fell for was programmed to be his perfect woman.  Sifra is still efficient and attentive, but it's hard to be around her, so Aryan goes home early and tells his mother that he's ready for an arranged marriage.

The prospective bride is nice, but she's not perfect, and while Aryan goes through the motions for a while, he winds up sneaking away from the engagement ceremony.  Aryan is sad and lonely for a while, and then he has a genuinely terrible idea, the kind of idea that makes the plan in Chori Chori Chupke Chupke seem sensible and well planned out.  Aryan calls Urmila and convinces her to ship Sifra to India, to see if she can fool a traditional Indian family; it's market testing!  And then he calls his mother and introduces her to his new fiance, Sifra, then brings her around to meet the family.

What follows is the kind of comedic business that was common in Bollywood romances around the turn of the century.  One member of the romantic pair has a secret, and they try to protect that secret while still becoming a part of their new family.  There are inevitable misunderstandings and a little bit of slapstick, but it's all in good fun with a sci-fi twist, right?

Well, no, because the movie actually realizes that this is a terrible idea.  Sifra is Aryan's perfect woman because she was programmed to be Aryan's perfect woman, but she isn't human.  She doesn't have emotions, doesn't seem to have free will, and interprets instructions in the most literal way possible.  and since she's really a computer in pretty lady casing, she's vulnerable to the things that computers are vulnerable to, like viruses and power surges.  It has to end in disaster, though it will be a relatively family friendly disaster, because this is a comedy.

Sifra isn't human, but she still emerges as a complex and interesting character; she's eager to please, but because Urmila didn't program her with anything resembling Asimov's Laws, she's quickly entangled in a web of conflicting instructions and tries to integrate them into herself.  Aryan, on the other hand, is a much more flat character.  He manipulates everyone because he's kind of a selfish jerk, and he stays kind of a selfish jerk throughout the film.  He does learn the film's intended lesson, that it's better to risk being involved with a real and flawed person than to be consumed by an apparently perfect but ultimately fictional ideal (Don't Date Robots!) but the early scenes set up a valuable life lesson about how you treat the people around you, and Aryan never manages to learn it.

Despite the flaws, though, Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Ulijha Jiya is a fascinating experiment with genre.  It doesn't just mix Bollywood masala romance with science fiction, it also turns that romance into a cautionary tale.