Seldom does Bollywood do good slice-of-life stories, but when it does, it strikes gold. Unfortunately, with Anil Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s much-awaited film, Fanney Khan, it strays far away from any sort of Midas touch altogether.
Exploring the life of Prashant Sharma AKA ‘Fanney Khan’ (Anil Kapoor) – a has-been orchestra singer – the film looks at his unfulfilled dreams of becoming famous, which now he wants his daughter, Lata Sharma (Pihu Sand) to fulfill. However, as fate would have it, his plus-sized daughter also struggles to make space for her talent in the industry, which is obsessed with glamorous icons, such as Baby Singh (Aishwarya Rai). In a twist of fate, however, life does change and wishes do get fulfilled albeit in unpredictable ways and for all the wrong reasons, as Fanney and his mate Adhir (Rajkummar Rao) end up kidnapping Baby Singh to spring their lives out of the poverty circle and get famous.
Force-starting a rollercoaster ride of emotions, Fanney Khan takes a 360-degree journey of everything that could go wrong, but still, ends on a happy note; for the characters, that is. For the audience, it’s a whole different story.
The film is miles from being good and is proof that talent alone, cannot hold a film together. Whether it’s the hackneyed script and dialogues or the music, the film falters one minute after another, as it nosedives into mediocrity. Fancy a film with zero moments of brilliance and a plot that looks exactly like Secret Superstar but misses out on the good parts? Then go for this debacle.
Apart from the script, the fact that Fanney Khan feels extremely disjointed when it comes to production aesthetics is another example of its failure. At moments, the film feels like the first-cut rather than a finished product. We surely question the shoddiness of it all, especially when it has been produced under Anil Kapoor’s production house.
That all being said, we’d still give the film two stars. One, for Rajkummar Rao’s acting, alone. Where stars like Aishwarya Rai fail to impress, Anil Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao’s camaraderie shines on the silver screen. Moments, where the two share the screen, are probably the only good times this film had to offer to the viewers. The other star, the film deserves for the message it tries to give out on body-shaming, which albeit remains clichéd, manages to get a point of judging talent instead of glamour, across.
Can small pockets of happiness save this trainwreck? Definitely not.
Something Haute Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.Â
