This Firangi lacks sparkle

Nonika Singh

What happens when the hero is also the producer and he is not an unknown entity but King of Comedy, the inimitable laughter specialist Kapil Sharma. Predictably, he will hog the limelight. But the good thing is Kapil doesn’t play it over the top. Nor does he carry his television persona as a popular host on to the silver screen. He underplays the part of the underdog and doesn't carve himself a larger than life heroic role.  

A simpleton Manga, who can't find a job in the police; the only knack he possesses is that he can cure back sprains by kicking the patients right in their posterior. Unbelievable, well the director and the writers are dead serious. In fact, the ‘talent’ takes him straight to the British officer (Edward Sonnenblick), who immediately employs him as an ardali. With a secure job, things should go right for him. Only, a lo behold, the grandfather (Aanjjan Srivastav) of his beloved is a peaceful revolutionary and won’t settle for a British servant. 

Oh yes, lest we forget, the film is set in pre-Independence era, somewhere in 1920s,  where British not only rule India but also connive with self-serving royalty to plunder commoners . How Manga becomes a pawn in their game and later an instrument against oppression is where all the drama is pitched. Part of it is interesting but stretched at two hour and forty minutes, it finally does become a drag. With Kapil at the centre of it all, comic relief should be packed in ample measure. Certainly, amusement is there but only sprinkled sporadically and it is nowhere close to a laugh riot.

More attention is paid to what our hero wouldn’t do for his love Sarghi (played by Ishita Dutta with some degree of bashful coyness). The film invents ploys to make him achieve his goal, throws in an Oxford-educated Rajkumari (Monica Gill), a besotted British and more. Why in the end it even brings Gandhiji on screen, though we hear him more than we see him. Gandhiji asks Manga Koi hinsa to nahi hui and he replies “thodi chalaaki ki”(used some clever ways). 

Wish they had employed some ingenuity in dealing with the subject of the film that soon falls into conjectures and rather juvenile story telling. Even talented actors like Kumud Mishra (as the debauch Raja) and Rajesh Sharma can’t salvage it. Local talent, such as Kuldeep Sharma and Neeta Mohindra, too fail to stand out. 

To be fair, the film is not out and out insufferable, yet nothing elevates it to another level either. Watch it, only if you are a die-hard fan of Kapil and love him in any avatar. Like his shows there is something endearing about him in the film too. However, for your quota of good laughs, stick to his shows.  Anyway, we prefer the witty Kapil with his comic timing bang on rather than this lovelorn goodhearted romantic who lacks spice and sparkle.