#FindingFanny English/Hindi Bollywood Film Movie Review, Johnson Thomas, Rating: * * 1/2
#FindingFanny English/Hindi Bollywood Film Movie Review, Johnson Thomas, Rating: * * 1/2
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#FindingFanny(English/Hindi) Rating: * * ½ Looks
good but doesn’t feel good. Quirky but not happening. The array of stalwarts
raises the expectations, only to be belied. Silly scenarios abound and light
hearted moments get interspersed with stupid machinations. Fairly humorous but
not strong enough to help you believe in this wildly fictitious, facetious quasi-fantasy road-romcom. Anil Mehta’s
sumptuous cinematography is the silver lining in an otherwise unimpressive and
less than substantive offering! #MaddockFilms #HomiAdajania #AnilMehta
#DineshVijan #DeepikaPadukone #NaseeruddinShah #DimpleKapadia #PankajKapoor
#ArjunKapoor #UniversalPR #ParagDesai
Hindi Film review
Johnson Thomas
Fitful Engagement
Film: Finding Fanny
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapoor, Dimple
Kapadia, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Kapoor, Anjali Patil
Director: Homi Adajania
Rating: * * ½
Director Homi Adajania created a stir with his
‘Being Cyrus’ and jingled the Box-office with ‘Cocktail’ so his star is on the
advent in Bollywood. At least it was...until ‘Finding Fanny’ got released.
Though peopled with thespians like Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapoor, Dimple
Kapadia and coupled with red hot Deepika
Padukone and Arjun Kapoor, this film has very little to show for it. Set in a
fictitious sleepy haven in Goa, this film focuses it’s flimsy plot on five
characters who come together in search of a long lost love. The luscious young
widow Anjolina(Deepika) who lost her husband Garbo (Ranveer Singh) to an
inadvertent choking accident on her wedding day is now living with her
mother-in-law widowed/abandoned Rosie Eucharista(Dimple Kapadia) in a well
used, largish Goan home. One fine day
she comes across her older friend, Post master Ferdinand/Freddy(Naseeruddin
Shah) weeping over a letter and once she figures out the reason, decides to set
out with a team of eccentrics, in search of Fanny(Anjali Patil), Ferdie’s
long-lost unrequited love from 46 years ago. Accompanying these three are
just-returned-from-Mumbai, Savio
(Arjun) and a painter Don Pedro Cleto Colaco (Pankaj) who lusts after Rosie for
his muse... and Rosie’s cat.
Not much of a plot and too
much of a vacuous justification to set out on a road trip that takes them
several kilometers away in a barely running car on a wild goose chase before
they come together again at a funeral. The typical Goan setting cinematographed
with rapturous engagement by Anil Mehta, makes for a befitting backdrop to the
quirky goings-on of this unusual menagerie of misfits. Unfortunately there
isn’t enough fodder to chew on- just some exaggerated inter-personal engagement
that comes out as pre-meditated and showy rather than integral to the telling.
There are some sublime, funny moments but they are not enough justification for
this exercise in futility. It’s not as if the story is set in a time way back.
It’s only set in a place that may not exist beyond the imagination of it’s
creator. Homi Adajania, being Parsi, brings a very eccentric Parsi sensibility
to the characters he creates on screen. As a result all of them behave like
aliens in a place more renowned for it’s ‘sussegaat’ a.k.a relaxed attitude
rather than fictitious eccentricies displayed in this film. Goan culture and
sensibility is also far more liberal than exhibited in this picture.
When Savio dares to
kiss Angie, he gets slapped for his forwardness. Angie is also projected as
someone who has been dutiful to her mother-in-law and faithful to her dead
husband’s memory. Rosie is verbally projected as someone who hates Ferdie but
there is no visual sense of that hatred/antagonism. Then there’s the death of Rosie’s cat- Rosie conveniently ignores the
cat for several hours after the event. I don’t believe any true pet lover would
be so absent-minded as to think her cat
was sleeping without so much as a murmur- for such long hours, as
implied. When Rosie gets hold of an antique gun and shoots it off accidentally,
what follows is completely untenable.
The manner in which the director shows us
the incident and it’s aftermath, reeks of sloppiness. In fact the script is the
best example of a lazy attitude, while the characters appear to have been
implanted from an alien universe. Quirky for quirky’s sake is pointless. This
is a facetious attempt at quirky satire, much like Vishal Bharadwaj’s ‘Matru ki Bijli ka mandola’ – the characters
are interesting and at times even entertaining for a bit, but they don’t add up
to anything substantial or worthwhile. The actors, all, for once, try to keep
the faith going but their place in it is so shaky that it becomes futile,
eventually. It’s all very well to create an illusion but without worthwhile
content, even that fails. There’s no ‘take home’ from this!
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