Saturday, June 16, 2012
Ferrari Ki Sawaari
SLOW DRIVE
There’s a scene in Ferrari Ki
Sawaari, in which a child who is about to have his dream of going to a
cricket camp at Lord’s shattered, consoles his distraught father by telling him
that Sachin Tendulkar had not gone for coaching abroad. That scene could have been the key to the
film, to tell people with impossible dreams that you need determination, not
money, to make them come true.
But the film blew it, and turned into an urban melodrama of a
middle-class family’s aspirations, and the lengths a father will go to in order
to fulfill his child’s wishes. Truly inspiring stories are the ones in which
the characters face insurmountable odds—Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal managed that. Because the story of Rajesh Mapuskar’s film is
so flat and without nuances of emotion, it remains a sweet, but slightly boring
watch. If a viewer has no interest in cricket or cars, then the film has even
less to offer.
Setting the film in a Parsi colony was a nice touch—the general
perception about Parsis is that they are honest and meticulous and these traits
in the lead characters form the spine of the story. Rustom Deboo (Sharman
Joshi) is a ‘sandwich’ dad, trying to look after his cantankerous father Behram
(Boman Irani) and meet the needs of his cricket-crazy son Kayo (Ritvik Sahore).
Rustom works as a head clerk at the RTO and with his meagre salary finds it
tough to bear the extra costs of Kayo’s cricketing gear. When the boy has a chance to go to Lord’s for
coaching and the fee is beyond his father’s means (though a lakh and a
half is not a huge amount today!) for the first time in his life, he does
something wrong.
A wedding planner (Seema Pahwa) has promised a small time politician a
Ferrari for his son’s wedding baraat. The only Ferrari in the city belongs to
Sachin Tendulkar, and with the kind of ease that only a lazy script can come up
with, Rustom gets a chance to drive it away.
In the course of the day, the attention of the Deboo family, the wedding
party and two of Tendulkar’s terrified employees is fixated on the Ferrari.
The film is neither fast-paced nor funny enough, nor does it make the
heart stop and soar with Rustom’s mounting troubles. In fact, everything
happens too effortlessly for him, never is there any doubt that he will achieve what
he set out to, and not get into any serious trouble.
Even in a mostly bland film, there are a couple of moving scenes, like
when Behram, puts aside his pride and goes to meet his nemesis, Dharmadhikari
(Paresh Rawal), the man who has destroyed his own cricketing career; while he
is humiliated by the man’s indifference, his honour is restored by the genuine
admiration of a waiter. The film needed
more such unpredictable moments.
Boman Irani, being a Parsi himself, gets the quirks of his character
down pat; Sharman Joshi is painfully earnest, wearing a long-suffering look
throughout—either smiling sadly or weeping--he just isn’t given any shades. The
kid is perky and cute. Paresh Rawal
shines in his two scenes. The supporting cast of lesser known faces is not
quite up to the mark. Vidya Balan’s lavni is fine, it serves as a dash of
colour and change of mood.
Labels: Cinemaah
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