Director: Anil Sharma
Cast: Utkarsh Sharma, Ishita Chauhan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Bollywood’s illogicality hits a new low with Anil Sharma’s Genius. He may claim that his directorial has everything from romance to action to drama, but I’d say he has only done a good job in parodying these genres in the film. No matter how noble or imaginative his storytelling intent would have been, Genius is an awful mess.
In fact, it’s an assault on the eyes, the brain, common sense and human logic in general.
Not even the presence of Nawazuddin Siddiqui can save this film from the terribly-executed screenplay and obscure plotline which never feels like anything greater than a ‘90s C-grade film where the hero falls in love with the heroine at first sight.
The film has many tired clichés that after a point you start enjoying counting them. In fact, the film’s very beginning makes it clear that Bollywood can never grow up when it comes to dealing with a genre of love story.
But wait this love story pretends to be different from what we have been served before, just as its tagline says Dil ki ladai dimaag se.
As the film goes, we come to know that Vasudev Shastri (Utkarsh Sharma) is an agent whose last mission was failed after his entire team was shot dead by a gangster called MRS (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). His girlfriend Nandini (Ishita Chauhan) has been called back from the US to be with him as he thinks he’s responsible for what all happened. One fine day, he sets out on a stylistic rampage to take down MRS who killed his colleagues.
There are scenes that are shot inside the parliament and the offices of several government agencies just to make sure that the film’s premise looks as real as possible but they all look like a joke as none of them makes any sense.
Suddenly, the story goes on flashback where we see Vasudev in a totally different avatar. He’s a priest now. He loves chanting Sanskrit hymns and has immense love for Mathura and Vrindavan. As if it wasn’t enough, Anil Sharma throws an unnecessary dancing number.
And then there are dialogues like, “Free ho? Nahi mehanga hoon par aapke liye toh muft mein bhi bik jaaunga," “Blackmail karne ki koshish kar rahe ho? Black toh aap samajh rahi hain, main toh mail karne ki koshish kar raha hoon."
Actually, the biggest question is not whether Vasudev will be successful in taking his revenge, or will he get the girl, but what am I doing here?
Both Utkarsh and Ishita are underwhelming and emotionally flat in the film and never manage to overcome the film’s extremely confusing plot.
Genius is the most frustrating film of recent times.
Rating: 0.5
Comments
0 comment