REVIEW 726: CHHICHHORE

Release date:	September 6, 2019
Director:	Nitesh Tiwari
Cast: Language:	Sushant Singh Rajput, Shraddha Kapoor, Varun Sharma, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Naveen Polishetty, Tushar Pandey, Saharsh Kumar Shukla, Prateik Babbar  Hindi

A present-day tragedy sends Annirudh Pathak (Sushant Singh Rajput) off in search of his best buddies from his youth. They were all students at India’s most prestigious engineering college about two decades back when they joined forces to get rid of the loser tag slapped on their hostel by the rest of the institution.

Anni gathers his gang – now older and many of them balding – around his son to recount their shenanigans from back then and convince the boy that winning is not everything, that the fight counts. At first Anni’s ex-wife Maya (Shraddha Kapoor), who was also their collegemate, is cynical about this strategy to lift the child’s spirits. She changes her mind though as the group gets deeper and deeper into their story and their young listener begins to get involved with these characters, some of who once went by the names Sexa, Acid, Mummy and Bevda.

Writer-director Nitesh Tiwari had his heart in the right place when he conceptualised this project. Chhichhore (The Childish Lot) is about an India that teaches youngsters to slog, compete and celebrate victory but almost never counsels them on how to handle defeat. It is a lesson that this country and its blinkered education system, pushy parents and mindless teachers sorely require. It is a lesson that sensible parents and forward-thinking teachers have long tried to propagate. The vehicle for this messaging needed to be less shaky though.

From the word go, Chhichhore’s 3 Idiots hangover is evident. That 2009 blockbuster by Raju Hirani was not without flaws – its take on education was simplistic and one-dimensional, it cast men in their late 30s and mid 40s as teenagers, and it trivialised rape in that horrid “balatkaar” speech. For the most part though, its humour was not insensitive, and one thing is for sure: 3 Idiots had its own voice. Chhichhore is a film in search of a voice that ends up looking, feeling and sounding all mixed up.

Too much about this film is uneven and confusing. For a start, how come the boys have aged when we meet them in the present day but Maya has not? The only change in her is that her attire and styling are less sassy and flouncy. From Western dresses and short hair the older Maya has switched to staid cotton saris, salwar suits and a boring bun. But her skin, hair, posture and gait remain unchanged. It is as if Team Chhichhore felt that unlike men, ageing women are not worthy of screen space.

Even Maya’s wardrobe and style in college are inexplicable. She has the appearance of a girl from a much earlier era than her male collegemates, perhaps the 1960s.

Not that the men fare much better in their senior avatar. With the years added to their lives, their hairlines recede but several of them continue to have skin as supple as a baby’s bottom.

These might have been excusable glitches if Chhichhore had got its tone right, but unfortunately the narrative never quite settles into doing its own thing. Both thematically and tonally, the film is trying to be what it is not throughout, borrowing heavily from 3 Idiots in terms of mood and even plot points. And the back and forth switches between the present and the past are just not effective.

What works in Chhichhore are the sports contests which do have an air of suspense about them, a considerable part of the banter between the friends in their younger days, and the energetic songs Control and Fikar Not (music: Pritam, lyrics: Amitabh Bhattacharya).

Nitesh Tiwari clearly has a talent for setting up battles in the sporting arena – he proved that in his last film, Dangal, and proves it again here. The many matches in Chhichhore, the boys’ hilarious immaturity and sharp tongues are often thoroughly entertaining. And while Maya remains a shadow in the background of the narrative that is anyway largely bereft of women, it is nice to see a Hindi film set in an environment where gender segregation is the norm but the hero’s wooing of the heroine is not noxious and stalkerish.

None of this is, however, enough to sustain Chhichhore. There are too many draggy patches in between, the acting is inconsistent, and the somewhat superficial messaging adds nothing to the “what matters is that you tried” line we have heard before.

The writing of Chhichhore (by Tiwari himself with Nikhil Mehrotra and Piyush Gupta) is so lacking in depth, and the direction so passionless, that it is hard to believe it is brought to us by the same person who made Dangal. Despite its sporadic bursts of humour, Chhichhore comes across as a half-hearted enterprise.

Rating (out of five stars): *3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	146 minutes

A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/chhichhore-movie-review-sushant-singh-rajput-ages-shraddha-kapoor-does-not-in-a-hotch-potch-with-a-3-idiots-hangover-7295001.html

Posters courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/foxstarhindi/

REVIEW 717: KHANDAANI SHAFAKHANA

Release date:	August 2, 2019
Director:	Shilpi Dasgupta
Cast: Language:	Sonakshi Sinha, Varun Sharma, Badshah, Annu Kapoor, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Rajiv Gupta, Nadira Babbar, Rajesh Sharma, Priyansh Jora Hindi

An old man bequeaths his Unani sex clinic in Hoshiarpur to his young niece – imagine the potential of that premise.

Sonakshi Sinha plays Baby Bedi, a medical sales representative from a struggling lower middle class family who sees light at the end of the tunnel when a beloved relative, Hakeem Tarachand (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), leaves his business to her. The conditions of his will do give her pause: she has to run the clinic for six months before she can sell it, which leaves her with a double whammy to contend with. First, she is not a qualified Unani doctor. And second, the late Hakeemsaab’s practice was frowned upon not just by society at large but also by her own family. Back-breaking debt, a mother (Nadira Babbar) and brother (Varun Sharma) who depend on her, and the possible loss of their home leave her with no choice though. And so begins her adventure.

The promise of this subject is multi-pronged – the agony of men, women and couples with sexual problems in a conservative community, the social squeamishness around sex, the restrictions placed on women, and a general unawareness about Unani medicine among a modern urban audience. If these had been tackled with depth, there is so much that Khandaani Shafakhana (Family Health Clinic) could have offered. Depth though is missing in this film that touches upon all these elements, but sinks its teeth into them only in fits and starts. It has its moments here and there. However, overall, although it is meant to be a comedy drama about sexual health, the comedy is occasionally on point but there is not enough of it, the social commentary is very occasionally insightful but not enough, and the drama is not dramatic enough.

The screenplay by Gautam Mehra lacks the life that Baby’s medicines seek to inject into her patients. With such flaccid material at hand, a perfectly good cast is wasted. Sinha is talented but her earlier works have often been pulled down by her directors’ and her own self consciousness about the shape of her large eyes, the curve of her nose and their combined effect on her profile. Here in Khandaani Shafakhana she controls that particular propensity and an intermittent tendency to play cute, turning in a performance that is as thoughtful as it can possibly be considering the flimsiness of the writing on offer and the under-confidence in debutant Shilpi Dasgupta’s direction.

Fukrey’s Varun Sharma is funny although his dialogue delivery sometimes needs clarity. Nadira Babbar manages to draw the most out of this thin story. And Annu Kapoor as the lawyer handling Hakeem Tarachand’s will is amusing to begin with, but fizzles out in the face of repetitiveness.

These four fare best among the entire lot. Superstar rapper Badshah makes his acting debut as superstar rapper Gabru Ghatack in a poorly defined role that depends too much on his real-life personality for its effectiveness. Imagine the potential here too – a musician who is all the rage having to hide his sexual disorder from an audience that has bought into his macho image. Like everything else in Khandaani Shafakhana, he too is wasted.

The one who suffers the worst injustice at the hands of this film is TV’s sweet-faced Priyansh Jora whose attractive personality makes you long for something substantial to happen to his character in the next scene, or the next scene, or the next...but it never does. As Baby’s neighbour in the locality where her dispensary is located, we notice the good-looking guy as soon as we see him. So does she. But he is given almost nothing to do.

It would be unfair to say that there is no chemistry between Sinha and Jora, because the screenplay invests zero effort in their equation. He has a star quality and it is clear in the final song that he has at least one gift that will come in handy if he wants to be a conventional Bollywood hero – he can dance – but the camera ensures that there is not enough of him even in that closing number.

Where the film does strike a chord is with Mayur Sharma’s production design of Baby’s home of limited means, the look of the titular Khandaani Shafakhana (although the dense cobwebs were inexplicable considering that Hakeem Tarachand had not abandoned what was clearly a busy practice) and the milieu of the neighbourhood in which it is situated. The middling music, on the other hand, serves only to stretch a narrative that already feels too long despite the seemingly economical running time of 2 hours 17 minutes and 38 seconds.

Sexual health is not a theme often visited by Bollywood. In 2012, Shoojit Sircar pulled off a film about a sperm donor with immense maturity and sensitivity, neither of which took away from its comedy. What his Vicky Donor had going for it, apart from his own finesse and a great cast, was a great writer: Juhi Chaturvedi. R.S. Prasanna’s Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (2017) – which also starred Vicky Donor’s Ayushmann Khurrana, this time playing a man with erectile dysfunction – was entertaining though not quite as good. There is so much of this territory that could be further explored. To place a woman at the centre of a film about a Unani sex clinic in an orthodox small town was a stroke of brilliance on the part of the team of Khandaani Shafakhana. Beyond that, the best thing about this film is that it deals with a tricky subject without getting icky at any point. That apart, Khandaani Shafakhana is an opportunity lost.

Rating (out of five stars): *3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	137 minutes 18 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/khandaani-shafakhana-movie-review-sonakshi-sinha-is-handed-a-lifeless-sexual-health-clinic-7097601.html  

Visual courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/KhandaaniShafakhana/

REVIEW 551: FUKREY RETURNS

Release date:	December 8, 2017
Director:	Mrighdeep Singh Lamba
Cast: Language:	Varun Sharma, Pulkit Samrat, Richa Chadda, Ali Fazal, Manjot Singh, Priya Anand, Vishakha Singh, Pankaj Tripathi  Hindi

 

Hunnny, Chuchcha, Zafar, Laali and Bholi Punjaban are back. They are as nutty as they were the first time we met them in 2013’s sleeper hit Fukrey produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani. Back then, however, the refreshing naturalness with which Mrighdeep Singh Lamba portrayed them and the director’s own evident understanding of middle-class Delhi were good enough reasons to forgive that thoroughly enjoyable film its slightness. In retrospect though, Fukrey feels profound in comparison with Fukrey Returns. The novelty has worn off by now, and Lamba is so busy sitting on his laurels that he does not bother to come up with a semblance of a credible plot for the sequel. Since his sense of humour remains intact, what we get is a hollow film that feels like a series of hilarious jokes strung together.

Life has somewhat settled down since the boys were introduced to audiences. Hunnny (Pulkit Samrat) now runs a business and is in a comfortably happy relationship with his girlfriend Priya (Priya Anand). Zafar (Ali Fazal) is a successful singer and is moving in with Neetu (Vishakha Singh). Laali (Manjot Singh) still longs to free himself of his mithai-shop-owning father and still yearns for a woman to fall in love with. And Chuchcha (Varun Sharma) is dreaming dreams.

When the gangsta Bholi Punjaban (Richa Chadda) gets out of jail and confronts them over the financial losses they have caused her, the four get stuck in a scheme to make a few crores overnight. Of course things go awry. Of course they run around in circles, giving them time for scene after comic scene. And of course everything is sorted out in the end.

The story – if it can be called that – revolves around the premonitions encased in Chuchcha’s dreams. Add a powerful politician (Rajiv Gupta) to that mix, a zoo, a tiger and a tiger cub, and the result is a motley assortment of ingredients that do not at any point come together as a smooth blend.

For one, Zafar and Laali are completely irrelevant and nothing would change without them. They have so little to do in Fukrey Returns that they look like hangers-on who were retained simply because they happened to be in the first one. This is the film’s loss because Ali Fazal and Manjot Singh are both capable actors.

Priya and Neetu, who were largely responsible for giving Fukrey whatever little depth it had, are even more marginal than these two gentlemen. They disappear through most of the film and resurface for one madcap ride towards the end, for no particular reason other than that Lamba perhaps wanted to assemble the entire cast, Priyadarshan-style, for the climactic moments. This too is the film’s loss because Priya Anand and Vishakha Singh have both proved their mettle as artists in their brief filmographies.

It speaks poorly of the screenplay that four characters could be entirely dispensed with and it would make nary a difference to the storyline or the narrative.

Chadda as Bholi Punjaban fares a little better, not a lot. The problem with her has more to do with the somewhat zestless acting than the writing though. Gupta, who has been lovely in other films, is given little to chew on here but pulls through. Pankaj Tripathi deserves applause for his value additions to the ordinary writing – with a look here, a gesture there, an amusing posture elsewhere, he manages to make a mark with a barely defined character.

Fukrey Returns’ screenplay has invested itself in one role and one role alone, and that role ends up being the only reason for its survival: Chuchcha remains laugh-out-loud, hold-your-stomach-or-it-will-hurt funny and Varun Sharma is hysterical. The actor’s flawless comic timing makes every moment with his character a fun ride. Even when the humour gets more slapstick in tone than Fukrey and becomes physical, it steers clear of being crass for the most part. I confess to feeling uneasy with a scene in which a firecracker pierces a man’s bottom, but that requires a separate and very long discussion that we have not even begun to have in our country as of now.

(Note: The story, screenplay and dialogues of Fukrey Returns are by Vipul Vig. Lamba has been credited for “additional dialogue and screenplay”.)

Sharma’s killer comic talent and the lines he has been given are the driving force of Fukrey Returns. Pretty much everything else about it is listless. Even the presence of a tiger and a cub on screen have not been sufficiently mined for effect. 

Make a film around Sharma/Chuchcha, if you wish, Mr Lamba. If you do intend to bring back the rest of Team Fukrey in a third venture though, please remember not to neglect them as you have done in this one. The consequence of that neglect is that Fukrey Returns is funny but its gnawing hollowness is impossible to ignore. It may as well have been a stand-up comedy show headlined by Varun Sharma instead of a film.

  

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	131 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/fukrey-returns-movie-review-this-richa-chadha-varun-sharma-starrer-is-funny-but-hollow-4248339.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukrey_Returns