Pagalpanti REVIEW: John Abraham, Anil Kapoor film is a hot senseless mess

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Full Article here: https://gn24.ae/8fab844bbcca000 Dubai Cinema Timings - https://gulfnews.com/cinema-listing#cinema/movie/HO00007540 See more at https://gulfnews.com/videos To say the Bollywood comedy — starring John Abraham, Anil Kapoor, Arshad Warsi, Saurabh Shukla and Pulkit Samrat — is an assault on our senses would be an understatement and wouldn’t cover the depths of our despair. ‘Pagalpanti’ is a chaotic comedy of errors that makes you want to pull your eyeballs out from sheer frustration. How this hare-brained comedy get greenlit may remain one of the biggest mysteries of 2019. #BollywoodReview #Pagalpanti #Senseless

Transcript

00:00Pagal Panti, the Bollywood comedy starring John Abraham, Saurabh Shukla, Anil Kapoor

00:05and a string of other Bollywood actors means chaotic and madness.

00:09Well, one thing is for sure and certain that I was mad with fury at the end of the movie.

00:19It's one of the most painfully overwrought comedies that I've seen in 2019 and I will

00:24honestly say it's one of the most disappointing comedies too. And here is why.

00:29I know John Abraham is a great looker. He looks like a million dirhams.

00:33But if he is expected to do the heavy lifting in a physical comedy that requires you to have the

00:39heft and the emotional bandwidth to play a character which requires him to be funny

00:44and emotional at the same time, then you have to be really good at your craft.

00:47And somewhere along the way, John Abraham does not have the

00:51width to carry you of this movie. He's expected to do the heavy lifting, but he fails miserably.

00:56Then there are good actors like Saurabh Shukla, Anil Kapoor, who looks remarkably young. I think

01:01he's one of the most age-defying actors acting like the mobster. And then there is John Abraham's

01:08friends played by Pulkit Samrat and Arshad Warsi. Now, these are seasoned actors. You can see that

01:14when they are trying to land the jokes, it works most times. But when you have somebody who just

01:19does not gel, then it just doesn't work at all. It didn't come together. The entire movie is

01:24supposed to be lowbrow. And by that, I mean that Aniz Bazmi, director Aniz Bazmi's movies

01:29are known for not being cerebral, are known for being, you know, those senseless capers.

01:35It's supposed to be chaotic. It's supposed to be mad. But if there is no sense in any of that,

01:41what's happening on the screen, it just gets very frustrating for the viewers.

01:45And somewhere along the way, I thought some of the jokes were really regressive

01:49and also written by a primary school student, because bullying is not one way to actually

01:55try to be witty or humorous. I mean, it's such a last season joke to make fun of a person's

02:00appearance. For instance, this movie deals with the business tycoon, a diamond tycoon,

02:06a real life one. He's called Nirav Modi. He went into the UK after looting India

02:11and taking loans worth billions of Indian rupees. And then the Indian government wants him extradited.

02:17So this movie also tries to poke fun at a character like Nirav Modi. But these smart

02:22people, I must say, with the collective IQ of, God knows, a third standard, third grader,

02:27they seem to have decided that we'll have somebody who looks exactly like Nirav Modi

02:32and call him Neeraj Modi instead. He's balding, he's short. That's supposed to evoke humor in us.

02:38And somewhere along the way, and I'm like, aren't you done making fun of people's physical

02:42deformities? Or rather, because you're short statured or bald, what is the need to make fun

02:47of it? And it somehow did not sit down well with me as well. Another thing that was really great,

02:53grating, is the collective performances of the women. All they're required to do is look pretty,

02:59dance at the drop of the hat, and also give some very, very damsel in distress kind of noises.

03:05It somehow didn't stick. There are actors like Ileana de Cruz. She was so good in Barfi,

03:10and then to see her in such a reductive role as this damsel in distress, who's out to exact

03:16revenge on her boyfriend who tries to cheat her out of her money, that's played by John Abraham.

03:22It just doesn't stick. And she's not very good at comedy either. Every actor in this movie is

03:27supposed to be hamming, or perhaps there's a lot of physical comedy involved, other than

03:31Saurabh Shukla and Anil Kapoor, who are really good at what they do. Their jokes land, the rest

03:36of them are not very good either. But there's Arshad Warsi, who I enjoyed. I mean, if I had to

03:42pick from the lot, I would go with, I guess, Anil Kapoor, because he's age-defying. He somehow

03:46still has the charm. And there is Saurabh Shukla, Arshad Warsi, and even Pulkit Samrat. He was not

03:52bad at all. I think the disappointment was John Abraham, and even the very, very thin plot.

03:58There's so much going on in this Mad Caper that at some point, your head is just pounding with

04:03the kind of characters that's thrown at you. The climax also has two lions that come out of

04:08nowhere. It's almost like, I have the money to burn, so let me see what all can I do? Can I

04:13insert a car chase? Can I insert a bank robbery? Can I insert four, five lions into the mix?

04:19It's just almost like you're burning cash. And it's so disappointing to see a movie like

04:24Pagal Panti, which is supposed to be a senseless Mad Caper. But even though it's a senseless Mad

04:28Caper, shouldn't there be some sense in it somewhere? At one point, John Abraham actually

04:33asked, don't we live in a senseless world? Yes, but that doesn't mean that you have to give us

04:37such senseless movies either. So I was very disappointed with this movie entirely. Apart

04:42from laughing a couple of times, I suppose, the movie did not hold much wit or humor. I've gone

04:48with one out of five. Frankly, if there was a rating below that, I might even give it that. But

04:53then, just for the effort, I guess, and the number of people that are involved in this production,

04:58which is set in the UK, the kind of money that has been spent, although it's a criminal waste,

05:03I would go with one out of five. Consider yourself warned. Stay away from Pagal Panti.

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