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Film: Bluffmaster (Marathi)
Cast: Ankush Chaudhari, Tejaswini Pandit, Kishori Ambiye, Pushkar Shrotri, Vijay Kadam, Mangesh Desai
Director: Kishor Saav
Rating: *1/2
When you pick up a title that has to its credit a decently well-known Bollywood film, the pressure to deliver should only be higher. And no, wearing a hat and shiny shirts with swanky suits while rapping to the title track, with a hot babe gyrating in the background, doesn’t cut it. The first half sort of gets off on a dull start as we get to know how Niki (Choudhari), Deepak (Shrotri) and Pakya (Desai) live hand-to-mouth as strugglers while a gentleman roams around with a picture of Niki.
The gentleman hires Niki as a model for an art assignment and paints the man in various forms. Niki, who falls in love with Deepak’s crush Sanika (Pandit), faces opposition from Sanika’s loud and obnoxious aunt Maushi (Ambiye). In a bid to win over Maushi, our man decides to play the role of his own aunt Sadaphooli aatya and his own father. What ensues is a comical confusion etc.
Well through the first forty minutes of the film, you endure a flat performance by Pandit juxtaposed against the extremely loud portrayal of Maushi by Ambiye. As Ankush Chaudhari transforms into a beautiful slender woman – Aatya -- you just about start laughing and giggling, but moments of boredom follow.
Of course, there are clever (not quite original) attempts at tickling the audience into laughing like the conversation between Deepak and Niki that only uses the titles of recently released films and it might just work, but there are moments of restless fidgeting and staring at the watch every now and then to see how much time exactly has passed since the film started.
Vikas Gaitonde’s make-up work is commendable as is Ankush’s performance, for we love Aatya and Uncle so much that we are almost ready to forget that the hero of the film is supposed to be Niki. One wonders why Pandit, who has won international awards for her acting in the past, delivers such a dreary performance.
While the film unravels, a few hearty giggles do escape my mouth and the brownie points go to Vijay Patwardhan and Anil Dikshit. However, one can’t help but reminisce about Bharat Jadhav playing five different roles in Sahi Re Sahi which was a live theater performance and so many acts on the silver screen come to mind -- the eternally smiling Chachi 420 that Kamal Hasan popularized while I was still in pigtails, Govinda’s Uncleji in Haseena Man Jayegi or Ashok Saraf’s old uncle in Dhumdhadaka or Kishore Kumar in the original Pyaar Kiye Jaa -- as Chaudhari switches between his roles for a song. And you don’t want to give Chaudhari a thumbs-up. Other actors have done this before with such skill and panache that they have claimed their rightful places in my mind for portraying multiple characters in a film.
Is Bluffmaster worth the effort of going to theater to catch it? No, certainly not. The film falls in the ‘Akshay Kumar-Aneez Bazmee’ genre of comedy, which is so juvenile you might just ROTFL (forgive me I am still suffering from seizures caused by last week’s Hollywood release LOL), but it gives you nothing memorable. No, it’s not a film you will think of while you sip a cola while waiting for a friend and giggle. No it is not a film whose songs you will hum for days after you’ve watched. It is simply a comedy that uses a tried and tested formula and it will make its money because amidst the politically charged environment and volatile markets and other such stresses of life, the urban or metropolitan Maharashtrian might need some comic relief.
PS: If it is comic relief that you seek, go watch Yedyanchi Jatra!
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