CINE TALK

NOT AN OvERwHELMINg COMIC OUTINg

NAU tANKI SAALA

STArrING: Ayushmann Khurrana, Kunal Roy Kapoor, Evelyn Sharma, Pooja Salvi, and Gaelyn Mendoca

DIrECTED BY: Rohan Sippy

HHH

If it is any consolation, Rohan Sippy’s latest presentation is far more cohesively constructed and sure of its raison d’etre than his last film Dum Maro Dum, which bumped off its protagonist half-an-hour before ‘The End’.

Thankfully, no one dies during Nautanki Saala! - not even the audience from laughing. This one is just not funny enough to qualify as a lol (laugh out loud) spree. At the same time, the bumchum camaraderie between Ayushmann Khurrana and Kunal Roy Kapoor is so pronouncedly pungent that we cannot but chuckle at the gambolling antics that take this desi French Friday special to the level of bearable humour.

Oh, didn’t I tell you? Nautanki Saala! is a remake of a 10-year-old French film Apres Vous, which I had the good fortune of seeing. While the French film, directed by Pierre Salvadori, is far more nimblefooted in the telling of a quirky ‘One Fine Evening...’ plot, the ‘official’ remake (unofficial ones went out of vogue with stringent copyright laws) scores for the sheer joie de vivre (don’t miss my French appreciation!) that Ayushmann brings to the table.

Kunal - as all of us who have seen that homage to horniness called Delhi Belly know - is an actor with notable comic acumen. Here as the spaced-out suicidal stranger, who blows into Ayushmann’s theatrical existence, Kunal confers a sense of hectic audacity to his intruder’s part.

Ayushmann bequeaths a clenched vitality to his character. Here’s an actor who knows how to milk a situation or a line and exactly where to stop before it goes over the top. As the reluctant exceedingly altruistic host to a suicidal guest, Ayushmann goes beyond his Vicky Donor debut to show some hefty mettle.

Unfortunately, the writing just doesn’t give Ayushmann, Kunal or the three pretty female actors a chance to breathe easy and let their characters acquire their own volition. Not that the screenplay is in a hurry to get anywhere. Rather, it takes its time to get somewhere that we don’t really reach in spite of the film team’s best intentions.

It remains a mystery why Sippywhose earlier films, for whatever they were worth, were originals - would now want to remake a mediocre French film. This is not as inexplicable as a remake of Himmatwala. But then again it does make you question the scarcity of original screenplay writers in our cinema.