Fukrey Reviews - Page 3

"Fukrey"… 4 Idiots

Posted on June 15, 2013

Mrighdeep Singh Lamba's Fukrey is the story of four youngsters who, needing money for various reasons, end up at the mercy of Bholi Punjaban (the awesome Richa Chadda), a shady operator who announces her predatory instincts with animal-print clothing. Her magnificence needs many mirrors – as in her gym. (Her SINDERELLA tattoo, though, is a too-clever touch in these surroundings.) The other women in the film are equally strong. Neetu (Vishakha Singh) breaks off a relationship when she sees it going nowhere (her boyfriend is too weak to snap the threads himself), but when he's in trouble, she pays his hospital bills and packs off a cop who threatens him. Even Priya (Priya Anand), who's not nearly as empowered as the others, manages to teach her boyfriend Hunny (Pulkit Samrat) a lesson. He's just a silly braggart, boasting about French kissing a non-existent girlfriend, and she forces him to grow up.

The men – the fukrey – are, by contrast, weak. They're weak in studies (needing tutoring by women). They're weak in ambition, preferring crooked shortcuts to striving (which at least Neetu definitely does). And they're weak in survival skills. Even the smarmy Pandit (Pankaj Tripathi), who likes to position himself as a do-it-all, proves more speaker than doer. At some level, Fukrey is a Priyadarshan movie (remember those comedies of desperation he used to specialize in?) or a Farhan Akhtar bromance (he's one of the producers) filtered through a feminist lens.

But if that description makes Fukrey sound like all subtext and no fun, perish the thought. This is an exotic beast, some kind of high-minded low comedy. It's centered on the Freudian conceit of interpreting dreams (always with lots of animals) – only, the interpreter is an underachieving school kid who faces the prospect of a third year in Class XII, in a Hindi-medium school. (When his best friend – Butt-head to his Beavis – speaks English, his response is, "Bob Christo ki aulad!") This is the kind of film where Hum honge kaamyaab is transformed into a gay-liberation anthem. This is also the kind of film that foists the line "Teri kismet tere haath mein" on a urinating boy. At times, the boy who dreams those dreams comes across like an idiot savant. At other times, he's just an idiot. A scene of torture at the hands of Bholi Punjaban includes running backwards on a treadmill. And yet, this absurdity doesn't preclude genuine crises – like a paralysed father needing expensive hospital care, or another father facing the loss of his business through no fault of his own.

Lamba's achievement is that – despite length and pacing issues – this mix doesn't result in whiplash for the viewer, and the reason is the rootedness of the milieu. Instead of putting quotation marks around the high concept (the way, say, Aiyyaa did), Lamba lets his story play out in the most unremarkable "Dilli" neighbourhoods, amidst the most unremarkable "Dilli" people. The pocket of boy's school uniform has a small tear on a side (a detail that made me recall days when fountain pens would go mysteriously missing). Boys ride bicycles as women, in flats above, spray their heads with water from freshly washed clothes. People in crowded buses casually overhear (and even insinuate themselves into) conversations. And when things threaten to get too unremarkable, too day-to-day, too ordinary, a low-rent impresario whips a devout crowd into a frenzy by staging the story of the mother goddess as a pop-spectacle, with actors costumed as lions and peacocks.

These splashes of local colour keep us laughing. The tacky board by the side of a bus stop that proclaims: "For love marriage contact…" The too-familiar query upon sighting someone after a long while. ("Kahin gupt rog nahin ho gaya?") The departure for a rave party in… a scooter with a sidecar. The mistaking of the most innocuous actions for Love, even in the direst of situations. The view of college as some kind of gauzy heaven, like peasants who've stumbled into a tony country club. The running gag between Lali (Manjot Singh) and the man outside the gurudwara who speaks in non sequiturs. And, best of all, anything said or done by Choocha (an uproarious Varun Sharma, who looks like he just might grow up to be Rajesh Sharma). Just watching his wide-eyed narration of his dreams is worth the price of admission. Even the tough-as-nails Bholi Punjaban cannot control a smile when he speaks – about, say, being born (literally) eons ago.

What's missing is the sense that something is at stake. Rather, we see what's at stake, we know it, but we don't feel it as the film progresses. The scene where Zafar (Ali Fazal) is forced to take his paralysed father's urine sample should have hurt like crazy – this is, after all, the lowly butcher who wanted his son to pursue his musical dreams. But Zafar's tears aren't ours. For a comedy of desperation, we begin to feel – after a while – that there is too much comedy, not enough desperation. But these people, these 4 idiots, are so incapable of doing anything right that their cluelessness becomes enough of an emotional mooring. We just want them to save their skins. Because, despite everything (including the fact that Zafar is a bit of a wet blanket), they're so nice. When Lali's girlfriend dumps him, he swears that he'll have his revenge by parading in front of her eyes a hotter piece of arm candy – but when the time comes, he simply smiles at her and waves. He's the kind of guy who can't bring himself to charge customers at his father's dhaba. How can he bring himself to break her heart?

Copyright 2013 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Film review: Fukrey

It's late night. The dogs are curled up and fast asleep in the gallis of a refugee residential colony in Delhi. A roly-poly grown-up boy has just escaped his captors and is running, with two burly black guys hot on his trail. He dials his friend's cellphone and tells him to come save him, and then adds, "Aa bhai, jaldi aa, ek Campa ki botal bhi lete aaiyo."
This absurdity, this skill to weave in non sequiturs is what makes director-writer Mrigdeep Singh Lamba's Fukrey a truly hysterical movie.
Fukrey follows a regular story arch: First, establish the protagonists and what they seek. Second, in pursuit of what they seek, let things go so bad that it seems like the end. And then, post-interval, resolve and send everybody home believing in happily ever after. But throughout, the screenplay stays focused on daffy thoughts, stuff that we all feel like saying but don't, because better sense prevails.
It's sad that a smart comedy like Fukrey has to be promoted as a film from the makers of Rock On, Dil Chahta Hai and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. The collective might of this sis-bro duo can't make a comedy that's half as funny. In a fairer world, Fukrey would have been promoted as a comedy from the director of Teen Thay Bhai, a 2011 film that I had, in my review, described as a story from "The Book of Punjabi Fairy Tales". A tale from the Gill and not the Grimm Brothers, it was about three brothers, Dadaji's adarsh and asthiyan and a Pomerian (Pomeranian).
Lamba saab's Fukrey is as Punjabi as a glass of lassi and a peg the size of Patiala. His writing and direction are high on both and dreams of, while lolling on a charpai, the neighbourhood girl on her terrace, riding on a horse wearing red shirt and black pant, and chane-bhature.
Walcome, as we say, to saddi Dilli.

There are two brother-like friends — Choocha (Varun Sharma) and Hunny (Pulkit Samrat). They should have been in third year of college but are still struggling to finish school. They are desperate to get into college. Why? Well, it's more a lifestyle choice than a career path — they'd like to go to college to taado (stare at) and patao (befriend) girls. They don't have a plan in life because they have a gift: Choocha dreams, and whenever he remembers his dream, he narrates it to Hunny, who then does the most bizarre brain calisthenics and deduces two things — the name of a lottery company, and the number of their winning ticket.
There are a few things you need to know. One, they always win. And two, in Choocha's dreams his bhai-like dost always gets mauled, humiliated and pissed on. And always, Choocha saves him. This stuff from Choocha's sub-conscious puts an interesting tinge on their yeee dosti...
Next we meet Lali (Manjot Singh), son of Billa Halwai, a cantankerous man whose irritation with the world begins with his morning routine of trying to fix his beard. Lali is doing his BA through correspondence but would like to join college because the girl he likes, Shalu, goes to college.
Since these boys are not going to get admission on merit, they approach Panditji (Pankaj Tripathi), the watchman of the coveted college. But as is the case with most watchmen, Panditji does more than just watch. He can get the entrance exam papers, for a hefty price, of course.
Oh! There's also Zafar (Ali Fazal) who just hangs around in college strumming his guitar, never quite finishing a dhun. He graduated three years ago and his ex, Neetu (Vishakha Singh), now teaches in the college. She dumped him because she was very clear that either he should strum her or the guitar. Both is just, you know, cheating.
Suddenly, Zafar gets a call from home and he desperately needs money. The three boys need money as well, to buy the papers, but for that they need money to buy lottery tickets.
Panditji takes them to Bholi Punjaban (Richa Sharma). We first see her fortress from an ant-on-the-floor perspective. An aerie of eagles circles above. Inside, we are made to scurry behind her as she rushes from this room and that corridor to scream at her neighbour, "Dalli, Dalli, Dalli, haan, hoon mein Dalli (lady dalal)". This is myth creation and it's important because Bholi is so over the top, so superbly vile, a she-goondi to shame many he-goondas, that taking us to her in any less dramatic manner would have been unfair.
Bholi Punjaban, in slacks, heels, an animal-print hoodie and flashing a misspelt tattoo, runs what can only be described as a department store of vices — money, girls, drugs, thugs on hire.
So when the boys approach her with their lottery scheme, she keeps something girvi and threatens the pichwada of the boys if they lose. Of course things go very wrong till they finally get better.
This may sound boringly linear, but the film is not. Each character, except Choocha, has an aside and the film keeps breaking into interesting tangents — Lali has tuitions and soft feelings for his teacher; Zafar has family issues; Hunny is ladaoing peche with a colony girl; and Bholi Punjaban has a client who is refusing to pay.

Fukrey's story and characters are more than just inspired by The Hangover. Hunny is Phil, Lali is Stu, Choocha is Alan, Zafar is Dough and Bholi Punjaban is Mr Chao. But Fukrey waddles on desi daru ka nasha. If The Hangover had to be remade in Bollywood, this is the way I'd want it to talk and walk, in Dilli.
The film's direction — its comic timing, on-location shooting which captures Delhi's flavour — is skilled except when it goes for cute and lets the boys, mainly Choocha, babble on and on. Fukrey makes us invest emotionally in its characters, especially Hunny and Choocha, but we know little about them. Are they bhai or dost? Where are their parents? Where do they live? How do they eventually get into college?
Director Lamba doesn't pay attention to all this because he is distracted. He just wants to make us laugh, which he does, often, with his dialogue and skits — the jagran skit is now one of my favourite comic scenes.
Fukrey's casting is almost perfect. Pulkit Samrat is the film's hero and the camera is always on him, even savouring his gestures in slo-mo. He is cute and efficient. Manjot Singh plays the most real character here though he's handed a shtick that's as funny as it's bizarre. It involves his Bullet, a druggie and a random passerby. Manjot Singh has shattered many clichs. This sardarji is an adorable, gentle, sweet-talking boy who always wears his heart on his sleeve.
Richa Sharma plays the foul-mouthed Bholi Punjaban with the temper and chutzpah of a woman who grew up despite the best efforts of all those around her. She's fascinating.
Pankaj Tiwari shines in everything he does, but Bollywood seems to be reducing him to a flunkey's role. He's got way more talent than that. Zafar is an affected actor playing a clich.
The film's music is nice, especially the title song.