Vikas Bahl\'s \'Ganpath\' - A Juvenile and Yawn-Inducing Cinematic Experience

Ganpath: Review

Starring: Tiger Shroff, Amitabh Bachchan, Kriti Sanon, Elli AvrRam, Zaid Bakri, Girish Kulkarni, Jameel Khan, Rashin Rehman

Direction: Vikas Bahl

This is unbelievable stuff. A 10-year-old will find it juvenile and a middle-aged person, yawnful. Vikas Bahl, a few weeks after the festival of the God, suggestively seeks to celebrate a meaningless, ill-crafted, sense-defying, loud, and clumsy film lasting for arguably the two longest hours of one’s life. You would expect mainstream cinema to at least knit together a credible tale. Execution has often been the bottleneck — even in the midst of a premise as wild as the Manmohan Desai capsule.

The double whammy of a nondescript story and a matching script iced by a shocking lack of sensitivity could make this one of the most torturous trysts at the theatres.

Our cinema builds around stars, violence, romance, and music. One suspects that these factors are worked on, and the dots connected. This time, it leaves you as clear as a novice at a seminar on quantum physics. Not the bucket of everlasting popcorn, not the cola of your choice, not the comparative comfort of the recliner can make things any better.

Wrapped in a time that knows no specification, it survives in a dystopian module built around the oldest clash: rich vs poor. The dystopia has mythical undercurrents — a two-world prototype labouring to build a seeming conflict between the depraved and the deprived. You cannot even accuse the filmmaker for losing the plot. There is none to begin with!

The baddies live in Silver City where there is the Bad Guys Club. The only thing you get to see of the city which is unblemished is a huge gate dependent on graphics for authenticity. The city is built on the sweat and blood of the poor who now are junked into some kind of a refugee camp. The startling difference is that while the former have glitter, glamour and horrendous clothing, the latter have leftovers of the early Geva colour from may be ‘Ben Hur’ and parts of canned ’Ajooba’ and ‘Thugs of Hindoostan’. To make things difficult or quizzical, the cast has actors picked from unknown places. The challenge to identify multiple characters popping in and out of a hazy tardy script – even with the assistance of Google Search — is perhaps a welcome distraction but does not further the assumed purpose of this indulgence. There is confusion in the name of strategy, cacophony in the name of music, villainy in the pretext of heroics, platitudes in the guise of political (Marxian) philosophy, dirt and dust for authenticity, string lights and serial bulbs for the tech-savvy futuristic New World. Everything is grotesque, avoidable by a long distance.

Guddu is a dancing Casanova who makes statements a la Hardik Pandya (‘Duniya haseeno ka mela, main raat bhar khela!Ö¹’). He is Man Friday to Baddie with horrendous dress John (Zaid Bakri) who wears collars that adventurous models will shudder to adorn. He is some Mayor of Evil and Gambling in Silver City. He is supported by the (dis)likes of Senior (Girish Kulkarni) and Kaizad (Jameel Khan). Guddu (Tiger Shroff) swears by John but enters the hate list unwittingly. He is buried alive.

He rises like the Phoenix and goes in search of Shiva (Rashin Rehman). The search takes him to “the other side”. The world that looks more like a junkyard neighbouring the refugee camp. This camp has a long-pending battle with the Mayor Vice and his team of baddies. In his search for Shiva, Guddu runs into Jassi (Kriti Sanon). This is broadly what passes off as the storyline. Guddu at halftime evolves into Ganpath and for some minutes and an hour dances, gambles, smooches, takes classes in martial arts — none of which have an iota of authenticity.

This is nonsense of unadulterated quality. Not an iota of grace or creativity. This is arguably more of an embarrassment than a cinematic experience. Perhaps only Tiger in the cast musters a minor mention. In one scene Ganpath says: “Apun marta nahin sir! Maarta hain.” A near confession!! He also claims, “jab dar lagta to bahut maarta.” This film stems in that and ends in needless bravado.