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No Fear No Favour

As Firangi fails to spread its spell, it won’t be an easy journey for Kapil ahead

Watching Kapil act innocent and robotically romance a much younger looking Ishita Dutta (last seen in Drishyam), who channels her inner Amrita Rao for almost three hours is hard to sit through. Unfortunately, the film’s massive runtime is not its only drawback.

The plot is heavily borrowed from Lagaan. Like Bhuvan (Aamir Khan), Manga (Kapil Sharma) must lead a group of villagers to challenge a British officer Mark Daniels (Edward Sonnenblick, modelled on captain Russell) with the help of his kind romantic interest Shyamli (Monica Gill, like Russell’s sister Elizabeth). Ishita Dutta plays Sargi, like Gracy Singh’s character Gauri. Mark wants to forcibly vacate Sargi’s village for financial gains.

Even if you ignore the ‘inspired content’, a period film deserves to be made on a certain scale and with some authenticity. All villages look the same and you see the same 15 people roaming everywhere. The costumes and accents are inconsistent. The British sound American, a London returned Indian princess (Monica Gill) dresses and acts more British than the British. She speaks to her fellow Indians in English and with the British in Hindi. The evil Indian king (Kumud Mishra) is neither funny nor menacing.

The only actors who look logical and put in some effort to their characters are Edward Sonnenblick and Anjan Srivastav (as Gandhi bhakt). They try to infuse some method to the unending madness. Firangi moves at a snail’s pace leading us to a semi-fun climax. The family film isn’t really tacky or repulsive, it’s outright boring and that’s probably worse because it’s not even unintentionally entertaining.

Kapil revealed the budget of Firangi, but will it be easy to recover Rs 45 crore this time, especially under the shadow of all the controversy? He probably prepared for it because the answer came real fast. He said, “What kind of crime have I committed? Is there even one star who hasn’t been in a controversy? If you’re much loved then even the controversy will be bigger. People ask many actors before clicking a picture with them, but I feel proud that they just drag me and click a selfie. They think I am one of them.”

Now we can only say Bad time for Kapil Sharma continues as nothing is going positive for him. The time will only tell what will bring Kapil to regain that position which he used to be earlier.

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