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Raja Sen:
Salman Khan Is The Worst Thing About Tubelight
This time, it's Sohail Khan's turn, and he gets to outshine his celebrated brother simply by keeping a straight face. Tubelight is a Salman Khan film that kept me longing to have Sohail back on screen, and those are words I'd never thought I'd type.
Tubelight is the story of a developmentally disabled man whose superpower is making constipated sounds.
The film is set in a small, fictional hamlet, where Laxman is loved and laughed at in equal measure, until one day a travelling magician uses him in a trick and shows him he can move a bottle with his mind.
This leads to Salman trying to move mountains and stop wars by sticking his arms out and grunting earnestly, over and over. These are supposed to be emotionally hardcore scenes depicting naive wholesomeness and a good heart. They come across unbearably farcical, crippled by what is possibly the worst performance of Salman's chequered career.
The film is rendered unwatchable because of the leading man.
Alongside the Khan brothers who look to have been inflated with tyre-pumps, there is a strong cast.It's the Salman Khan show, and here he is bobbing his head and widening his eyes, with all the expressiveness of a hurriedly drawn thumb-puppet.
Salman Khan is a liability in this bland film
Namrata Joshi
The biggest letdown, however, is Salman himself. Crying copious tears alone can't a good performance make. His handling of the child-man is all about pulling some embarrassingly weird faces at the camera. Not for a moment do you feel invested in Laxmanneither his little joys nor his gargantuan plights.
Kunal Guha:
Playing a specially-abled character onscreen is a gamble a little excess could translate as caricature, a little less could be read as lack of effort. While Salman Khan crinkles his face with much determination to furnish this desi Gump, cumulatively, it doesn't add up. That Khan had redeemed himself in the last few years and had with every film, inched closer to becoming an actor from a star, feels like a wasted cause as this one reverses that evolution. In certain scenes, he appears so puzzled, dazed and disconnected, even Sohail Khan seems actor like an actor with conviction while sharing the screen with him.
Uday Bhatia:
It's nearly always excruciating when an actor with limited talent plays a character with limited intelligence. Normally, the charge against Salman is that he doesn't do anything; here, he does so much that you'll be begging for him to go back to his minimalist ways.
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