THE AUDIENCE WON'T BE FOOLED
(But Bored And Baffled, yes!)
0.5 stars
Mini Review:
There’s an art teacher who lives a double life as an art forger.
A henpecked dad who is really a contract killer. A politician
who runs drugs and hence killing and looting. And sundry
characters who are do random stuff to try and get these
vastly different silly tales together. Every action is so
exaggerated and so needless, you feel your brain cells
die slowly.
Main Review:
Contract killers in Goa? A national minister who lives and works
in Goa? Punjabi cashew seller who lives in a house with Charlie
Chaplin on the door and a secret basement like in The Kingsmen?
An Art teacher who leads a double life as a art forger because he
has an original Renoir and accepts payments in cash which are
placed in a railway station locker on a platform full of people? Add
to that the hero named Baba, who has not a job to his name
(hence the title of the film), but turns into a killer with training from
his dad, and a heroine who owns a beach shack (the film is set in
Goa, what else is a girl going to do?!) but is shown do no work but
prance around in bikini tops…
Oh yes, there is a corrupt Home Minister (National post, but he’s
just hanging out in Goa…), his secretary called Narottam who
knows all the nefarious plans: Let’s distract the police chap who
is after my drugs by putting a contract on a businessman who is
helping me and when the policeman catches the killer of the
businessman he will forget about the drugs and then we shall
have the cop killed by my henchmen who also kill for me and run
my drugs and other illegal businesses, and all during a carnival
which happens inside a hotel. I will also get that businessman to
help me buy an original painting from a man called Santa Claus
as a gift to my girlfriend turned blackmailer and then go chasing
a man in the Santa suit because the girl who owns an art gallery
figures out it was a forged painting and add a few Russian girls
and foreign ‘experts’ who know instantly (by running a UV light
over the painting) that it is real or fake.
But the cop and the contract killers become partners and the
Minister gets killed and a gaggle of mindless photographers show
up at the art gallery (and at the railway station to ask the cop of
he caught drugs/money and then haplessly ask, ‘Yeh kya hai?’,
yes it means ‘What is this?!’ and we in the audience wonder too)
and force the blackmailing gallery owner to return the painting to
France.
There’s more, but as audience your brain has been trying to
assimilate all these random acts in the name of comedy and
wondering why good actors like Anupam Kher and Annu Kapoor
are both acting like buffoons and why Manish Paul breaks the
fourth wall and talks to the audience, why Kay Kay Menon (who
has aged disastrously in the film) wanders about the film with
grey eye lenses and a cowboy hat. My heart goes out to Manjari
Phadnis who is shown either prancing to forgettable songs or
just being plain sullen at finding out that her dad is the Santa
Claus art forger (I facepalmed rather loudly in the theatre
when I heard ‘Hava Nagila’ being played as the crooks called
Jamaal and Kamaal chase Santa around his house with a
Christmas tree and all!).
Mind numbed by these scenes accompanied by bizarre back-
ground sounds you emerge from the theater not having laughed
at anything. And you don’t want to tell the readers about how
Jamaal was killed by an African poison pointed baton dropped
by a drone…
(This review appears on nowrunning.com)
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