A Gentleman
Director- Go Goa Gone and Shor in the City waale
Actors- Washboard abs
Rating- Meh nahi khel raha
The film begins with Gaurav’s and Rishi’s stories running parallel, beautifully differentiated with a slight change of expression; Mr. Constipated Smile, upside down, turns into intensity personified Mr. Frown.
Constipated Smile is a safe guy. Writers have given him such subtle quirks, like he drives under speed limits, cooks and respects everyone. He even has an OCD, keeps arranging things in their place at his work station. Gosh, such depth, worthy of my soup bowl!!
You instantly learn that Constipated Smile is a Sales guy because he strings words like ‘graph’ ‘demands’ ‘market’ and other such meaningless jargon in a sentence like a pro. Wow such insights into the corporate world.
But he needs a foil. So let’s introduce the baddie. Opening shot? Hey hey hey, no points for guessing, it’s our shirtless wonder, displaying abs, flexing muscles, like he was not in a movie but in a Sauna Belt ad. Pehle main acha actor tha. Kapoor and Sons mein sensitive performance di thi…par jab se mujhe yeh film mili hain hain…tab se mere abs bhi express karte hain…actually sirf wahi express karte hain!!
Constipated and Frowny’s lives converge and become one. This is the highlight of the film, especially for those who believe in unicorns and claim to have spotted UFOs in their backyards.
Then there is a lot that the film offers; modern offices, smooth Miami roads, pristine beaches, fancy cars, a gorgeous house in the US, an Ikea sofa, Crate and Barrel dining table and the leading lady. Sorry I don’t mean to use Jacqueline and furniture in the same sentence especially when they are so different. The latter can emote.
Speaking of emotions, we have one expression miracle, Suneel Shetty. He plays the colonel and is at loggerheads with our very own Baddie Frowny. You might not know exactly why, but if you don’t doze off, you would hear some grave words like National Security Council, arms deal,desh ke liye mar mito…blah blah!
There is also a hard drive that has some confidential information of some illegal transactions that adds to the plot of the film. Sorry my bad, I am using unimportant words like plot. But the film engages you so much that you find yourself rooting for the hero, hoping this hard drive to reach the right hands soon, so that the film can end and you can go home.
The dialogues are both funny and emotional. At a point, someone addresses a character named Dikshit as Dick-shit, a joke we thought but didn’t bother to crack when Tezab released in late 1980s. And when the writers thought the movie was losing its soul, they made Gaurav mouth some sentimental lines like, mere ghar, mera sapna, choti si simple zindagi. Beware you will choke on your popcorn!!
Siddharth Malhotra and Jacqueline Fernandez are earnest. They genuinely put efforts trying to make sense of this enigmatic script. Incompetence direction and just lazy writing doesn’t give them any scope to salvage this pointless exotic, brochure of Miami.
A Gentleman was a gentle reminder of all other exciting things one can do this weekend, like bury your face in your bed and sleep.
fByLokesh 