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Join UsStar Cast: Jackie Shroff’s face, Aadar Jain, Shlokka Pandit, Elnaaz Norouzi, Rajpal Yadav, Bharat Ganeshpure, Girish Kulkarni
Director: Pankaj Saraswat
What’s Good: Out of too many scattered punchlines, few work
What’s Bad: It teases you by laying this larger-than-life premise, building hopes of having this unabashedly hilarious comedy routine, but exposes its hollow plot ruined by the lazy writing
Loo Break: If you took a break, you’re not resuming this!
Watch or Not?: If you’ve 100 minutes lying around to kill, go ahead!
User Rating:
A good for nothing Chirag Rastogi (Aadar Jain), coolly known as Charlie, is staying with his uncle (Darshan Jariwala), who loves his truck as much as Boman’s pappppa loved his car in Dhamaal. Parallelly, we’ve MD Makwana (Jackie Shroff), the country’s eccentric on-the-run fraudster, and we all know on whom this character is based on within minutes he’s introduced.
His ‘darling’ Mona (Elnaaz Norouzi) plans to disguise Makwana into a Gorilla and take him to Diu from Mumbai to secretly escape from the country through the sea. As both the tracks meet, Charlie steals his uncle’s truck in order to impress him by earning big bucks. The delivery he gets is of Makwana disguised as a Gorilla. Dumb Charlie agrees to transport the Gorilla, and what all the silly obstacles they face during the journey is what the story is all about.
Hello Charlie Movie Review: Script Analysis
From the idea of disguising a fraudster 60-year-old millionaire disguising as a Gorilla to a manchild asking him, “would you escape if I get you out of the cage?” before letting him out to change a tyre of the truck, Pankaj Saraswat’s story takes no time to prove it doesn’t know where the slapstick comedy ends crossing the line of bearable humour. You might have a laugh or two when a poker-faced Rajpal Yadav says “Bolo Beta” replying to his colleague ‘Alpha’ on the walkie-talkie, but that’s about it. No joke in the film touched this level for me & if you didn’t like this, don’t take any of my ‘positive’ words for the film.
Due to Excel’s strong backing, the film achieves to get a vibrant & vivid, colourful setting, but unfortunately, the screenplay (Pankaj Saraswat & Abhishek Khairkar) couldn’t utilise it to its fullest. This totally lies in the zone of Total Dhamaal; I hated that & I’d give this one an edge over that just because I laughed for like three times throughout. In such films, it’s the story that’s usually the culprit, but here, Abhishek Khairkar’s lifeless dialogues should be blamed. Despite all its lameness, the story had enough scope to squeeze in some over-the-top gut-busting dialogues, but you can count the good ones using three fingers at max.
Andre Menezes’ camerawork is fresh and breezy, but the overall negatives don’t let him hit its potential. All hail the person who has edited the trailer, which almost has all the good parts of the film. When a movie is of just 100 minutes, and you still feel the editors (Chandan Arora & Mitesh Soni) could’ve lost 10-15 minutes more, you know there’s an issue with the script.
Hello Charlie Movie Review: Star Performance
Apart from the three scenes, we see Jackie Shroff acting with his face as the Gorilla’s outfit acts like his Iron-Man suit. He proves to be a fun addition to the cast because the makers let him be. Due to the reflection of his real-life eccentricity, you don’t really mind him doing the ape-shit.
Despite giving some memorable performances, Ranbir Kapoor seems a bit off in this film. FOR THOSE WHO KNOW, KNOW I HAD TO DO THIS. Yes, the ghosts of resembling Ranbir are still haunting Aadar Jain’s performance. Though there’s a slight change in his voice, and now he sounds a bit also like Kartik Aaryan. He needs to channel his novel value and use it to break the bubble.
I read how Shlokka Pandit struggled for seven years, finally landing this role, and the efforts are visible. Despite entering late in the film, Shlokka maintains a proper balance adding her natural touch to the scenes. Glad that she’s in; getting a good script from here shouldn’t be as hard as it has been till now.
Mona’s character highlights Elnaaz Norouzi’s range which is very limited as of now. She has a decent screen presence which gets affected by the restricted number of expressions. Rajpal Yadav’s one funny dialogue (mentioned above) brings my knowledge of learning the proverb “sau sunar ki, ek lohar ki” to use. But, that’s about it; he’s wasted otherwise. Bharat Ganeshpure gets the role of drunkard doctor on point. Girish Kulkarni as the owner of ‘Diamond Circus’ is embarrassingly bad.
Hello Charlie Movie Review: Direction, Music
For the man behind the show that gave us Raju Srivastava, the man who wrote the screenplay for one of the most underrated films of all time Main, Meri Patni Aur Woh, it’s tough not to hype up the hopes. After the fact that I loved the trailer so much, the end result is disappointing.
Thankfully John Stewart Eduri’s background score doesn’t get loud at any point, and that’s enough for me to appreciate it. Nakash Aziz, Tanishk Bagchi’s One Two One Two Dance (penned by Vayu) is more catchy than I thought it would be. There’s one dance track apart from this, which is a worthless addition.
Hello Charlie Movie Review: The Last Word
All said and done; here’s how to get this in one line – imagine a Gorilla, all the weird things you’d make him do it and make him do it in a not-so-entertaining story.
Two and a half stars!
Hello Charlie Trailer
Hello Charlie releases on 09 April, 2021.
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