Review: MALANG

Heroine: Tumhe Maza Chaahiye Ki Sukoon?
Hero: Lemme Take Off My Shirt As Answer 

1 star

Mini Review: 

Cops are being murdered one after the other in a stylish way. The lead investigator is murderous but sings karaoke in a stylish way. The cop killer wears a stylish leather hoodie and hoodwinks everyone through stylish Goa carnival at night, Oooh! Cop killer has stylish lust and drugs and bucket list angle...All of this knit together with howlarious (yet stylish) lifestyle dialog that makes cola come out of your nostrils. And that's okay because the film is stylish, audience is not.

Main Review:

There's a hot girl in 'abroad' who smiles a lot tosses her hair and gives her computer and phone to a busker and boards a plane to Goa. That's a Sara by Disha Patani.

There's a dude who lives in some soft focus apartment with pictures of parents on walls. He packs his backpack, hands the picture frames to garbage truck guy and heads to Goa. How do we know he's hot? They show him taking off his tank top ever so often. That's Advait by Aditya Roy Kapoor. 

Of course the two meet and fall in lust while fireworks are going on. But it's so stylishly done, they show no hot and heavy anything, no bodice ripping, no acrobatic kiss like in the poster. Only a 'forward' dialog from Sara: I wanted to do this wild you-know-what with a stranger.

Before you choke on this so stylishly sanskari desire of her bucket list, I must tell you about the stylish bead band she wears. It has knots, each representing a fear she must overcome. If she does it, then she unravels one knot. That's what happens when you give away your phone...

My fear was: That bracelet had many many knots!

That brings us to how the movie begins. 

Hot dude is in prison, having a fight with a whole lot of burly men. Why? No one knows, but the prison fight is stylishly done (like the Punisher, Arrow... Take your pick!)... After he has hit many baddies and broken many tables, we realise a big guy had snatched Hot Dude's bracelet.

Awwww! He fought for her bracelet! So much love! Obviously, since he's wearing the bracelet and fighting other prisoners she must be dead...

Logic and learning from prison movies says Hot Dude should be put in solitary for fighting so many other jailbirds. But he's out. He's then calling demented cop who rubs what looks like cocaine on his hand (like salt for your tequila shots) sniffing it and gumming it too. Whaaat? But it looks stylish and the demented cop sings karaoke so it's okay.That's Anil Kapoor giving it his all to sing-and-then-kill routine.

So Hot Dude calls Demented Cop and says, 'I'm going to kill someone.' 
'Why?'
'Because, Happy Solstice.'

Both laugh maniacally. One because he knows why, other because he's hamming it up and we laugh helplessly.

There are more cops, each outdoing the other in stylish ways. Kunal Khemu looks like the educated cop but turns out that he's got Edward Norton from American History buried inside. That part appears suddenly and the audience is like, 'Whaa...' But very stylish violence against women (almost like the curb stomping) so I suppose you want Hot Dude to kill him too.

Hot Dude in the meanwhile has killed another cop at a New Orleans type night carnival during Christmas (?!) in Goa. Whaaa? And then another at a giant CGI football stadium with basement parking. As a footy fan and someone who has visited Fatorda, Tilak, Pandit Nehru, Duler and Bambolim stadia in Goa where football is played, this part felt more fake than stylish.

And which basement parking has TV screens? But Hot Dude (on foot) and Demented Dude (in cop car) play chicken which was very nice. After which Hot Dude gets caught. 

In the middle of it all are endless stylish scenes of Hot Girl and Hot Dude in various skimpy attire super fancy bucket list things with endless love songs that sound good initially but then become the antidote to inane pop philosophy both hot leads are spouting at each other.

'I am used to running away from relationships'
'Let us create a world for ourselves and live in the moment.'
'Sure, I'm Instagramming this moment. What's your handle?'
'I don't Insta.'
'Whaa?!"

I head out for another flat white trying to understand why Hot Dude needs to post videos on Insta when he's given up everything?

And on screen they're scoring 'drugs' stylishly, dancing with lots of 'foreign' hippes, never running out of money. And helping them is the only amazing character in the film: a hippie with dreds: Elli AvrRam. She is Jessie who does her bit spouting Swedish life mantras and carries a magic pouch with an antidote for all 'drug overdoses'. The cops have killed Hot Girl and now Hot Dude wants revenge. But we got this from the trailer and the details are painful to watch. 

A story cannot rely only on hot bodies of the lead actors.Nothing they did on screen made them endearing to us. Neither could we root for the cops. They were all just caricatures of bad cops in movies.Even though this film is made rather stylishly, Woohoo to the reveal moment of angel wings tattoo on Hot Dude's back with the rest of the screen burning as he takes off his tank top yet again (which is why the lone star). But the writing was cringe worthy. 

Kunal Khemu's reasoning for becoming a psychopath is one of those moments: My parents used to fight, mum was in pain. Pain travels through your head and ends up dangling between your legs...

The person next to me demonstrated Nosecola and I sputtered coffee all over the person sitting in front at that confession. 

But the worst is the dialog between the two hot leads:
'In life there are two choices: maza or sukoon...Which one will you choose?' 

Alas, this film offered the audience neither. 


P.S. If you are a girl in the movie and want to extract revenge, you must cut your long hair. Then wear hoodie.
This could be a trope.