Nautanki Saala

Rating: 3/5 stars (Three-Stars)

Star cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Pooja Salvi, Gaelyn Mendonca, Evelyn Sharma

Director: Rohan Sippy

What’s Good: some really good comedy scenes, theater set up.

What’s Bad: obvious comedy dialogues, PJs

Loo break: A couple in the second half.

Watch or Not?: One time Watch.  If you are bored with regular comedy movies then you can avoid this movie.

Paisa Wasool? If you are bored with stereo type comedy movies then better spend the money getting some good ice cream in the HOT summer!!!

Mandar Lele (Kunaal Roy Kapur) is a bumbling idiot – abandoned by the love of his life, declared a ‘loser’ by his grandmother with nothing more than a few failed suicide attempts to boast of. The thing is even to play a successful dimwit, you need some kind of character – imagine Govinda in ‘Partner’. Kunal Roy Kapur is regrettably inept at playing this role with either style or zest.

Ram Parmar aka RP (Ayushmann Khurrana), the protagonist is a compulsive do-gooder who is the director and the main lead in the play ‘Raavan Leela’. Except the scene in which Mandar on RP’s insistence is auditioning for Ram’s role (in Raavan Leela), every time I see the onstage drama and the playacting, I think of the squandered opportunity. There was so much potential in these scenes, some witty writing could have completely turned around the narrative and made it a laughter riot. I cannot help but think of the Mahabharata scene from ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro’, which 30 years later, still continues to have the audience in splits even on repeated viewing.

The romantic track is the weakest in the film and an overdose of emotional drama just saps the fun out of the story. Also, the female leads are really disappointing and it’s just difficult to comprehend why someone as sorted and good-looking as Ayushmann would fall for either of them. Ayushmann however, puts his heart and soul into this totally average film and makes it watchable.

It’s a simple story, where our hero tries his best to resolve not only the crisis in his half-witted friend’s life but also give him new purpose and objective. But as usual love plays spoilsport jeopardizing their friendship. However, in Bollywood, love always finds a way to triumph and set everything right. I just hope that the ride would have been more enjoyable.

There are moments of genuine laughter but this fleeting gratification demands extensive wait and endurance.  Sippy punctuates his scenes with too many pauses resulting in a dawdling pace and delayed conflicts, which makes its 130 minutes running time lengthier than it should.

Watch-> Trailer , Mera Man Kehne laga song