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Direction: Rohit Jugraj
Cast: Kunal Khemu, Tulip Joshi, Aushima Sawhney
Rating: **
Both the films released this week, Superstar and Mithya, have Bollywood in general and a junior artiste in particular at the centre of action. In both the films, the junior artiste is the spitting image of someone else, a fact that causes his life to change in dramatic ways.
But there the similarity ends as each spins out a totally different story. Superstar is about a struggling Kunal Mehra (Kunal Khemmu) who has reached the fourth row behind the hero in a music video and dreams of making it big in Bollywood.
Though his father (Sharat Saxena) decries his emotions he has the loving support of his mother (Reema Lagoo rolling her eyes like she was on television) and his buddies, which include his neighbour Mausam (Tulip Joshi).
Meanwhile, a desperate producer (Darshan Zariwala) is on the point of launching his no-good son Karan (Kunal Khemmu again) opposite Barkha (Aushima Sawhney). Surprisingly, he keeps saying he is spending Rs 50 crore on the film as if he was Sanjay Leela Bhansali making Devdas.
To cut a long story short, and this film is all of 134 mins long, Kunal becomes Karan on screen and eventually in real life too.
Director Rohit Jugraj bungs in everything in an attempt to appeal to everyone. So there is innocent, unspoken love (Kunal and Mausam), steamy love (Karan and Barkha), a mother pining for her estranged son, a sting operation, and even a ghost visitation. What he forgets to work on is characterisation; so important in a double role.
Unless, you call wearing a earring characterisation. So Kunal and Karan not only look the same down to the small mole under the left eye, they also have exactly the same length of hair and style, and walk and talk in exactly the same way though their upbringing is obviously very different.
If Superstar stays alive through some rather maudlin scenes, it is only because Kunal Khemmu, who is a promising actor, makes sense of it. Though he seems more at home in the part of the tapori struggler he also negotiates the more serious scenes by expressing through his eyes. Both the girls cast opposite him look older than him. Though the rather ambitiously named film will not take him to those heights, he is definitely a talent worth watching.
