Movie Review | Tiku Weds Sheru: Crass attempt at soul cleansing

OTT: Amazon Prime

Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Avneet Kaur, Vipin Sharma, Mukesh Bhatt, Suresh Vishwakarma

Direction: Sai Kabir

Given that creative artistes tend to leak their experiences into tales they tell, it is not surprising that Kangana Ranaut takes up a case of exploitation, in the name of aspiration and desperation, replacing inspiration, coming to represent a certain tone. Her constant exposure to power and success is now legion.

Bollywood periodically takes a mirror as a tribute to the truth, exaggerates its refractive error and always makes martyrs of those who chase dreams without a clue — not so much from their environs as from logic and reality. This is, at best, a crass attempt at soul-cleansing and a skewed criticism of those who literally chase their dreams with their feet mid-air. Given the premise of men and women in search of stardust and constantly being called to pimp or the sex trade is obviously a belated rehash of the ‘Chetna’ (B.R. Ishara) module that is woefully out of fashion. Even Rani Mukherjee and Jaya Bachchan and the scale could not have salvaged the narrative of ‘Laaga Chunari Mein Daag’.

How then did Sai Kabir even think of walking the path of shredded glass pieces? Given the fact that Kangana Ranaut has put her hard-earned moolah in the project and thereby, her approval, she may well have invested some thought and expertise to the exercise that eschews quality by a mile.

Shiraj aka Sheru (Nawazuddin Sidiqui) is an aspiring actor who can also recite couplets in Hindi but prefers to flaunt his abysmal English. He lives in a room/flat, with his cat Elizabeth. I guess the filmmakers ensured during the making of the film that no suffering or hurt was caused to the feline creature. Anyway, the targeted victims are those watching this Sai Kabir indulgence from the confines of their drawing rooms. Sheru has lied and cheated multiple people and even trampled upon the toes of drug peddlers, pimps and the like, which includes political leaders Chandresh Bhum (Suresh Vishwakarma), his sidekick Shahid (Vipin Sharma) and not to mention his own partner-in-crime Anand (Mukesh Bhatt).

Fortune taps on his door with a matrimonial offer from Bhopal and he gets married, after a contrived hiccup, to Tasleem aka Tiku (debutant Avneet Kaur), who is in a relationship with Binny (Rahoul, yes so spelt), who cheats her. After a discussion on a railway platform on whether he did or did not use a condom, he is at the receiving end of a slap fest. However, Tiku arrives in Mumbai with aspirations and no intent to keep the marriage going. Both the principal characters enter matrimony with baggage of falsehood, lies, wild illusions and greed for wealth.

If things are not sordid and morbid, distasteful, and creepy enough, you have drug peddlers and a galore of human predators, with not a single good bone in the Sai Kabir universe.

It is not just a bad script (credit: Sai Kabir again). It is a composition of hurriedly juxtapositioned ill-shot scenes to tell a story of bitter dreams. Even the shoot is hazy and appears as if it was done with no cinematographic expertise. Fernando Gayesky (cinematographer) is in perfect sync with the inept Sai Kabir. The latter has some talent that he can muck up with even Nawazuddin Siddiqui.

Nawazuddin is pathetic as never before. Deceived by a script and let down by horrendous execution and a clueless director, this Nawazuddin outing is rightly smuggled in through OTT platforms. Debutant Avneet Kaur needs a lot of encouragement and honing up of talent. Since it is a debut, she is best acknowledged for her presence. The one minor bright spot is the Salil Choudhary-da like number ‘Tumse milke laga’ (a Mohit Chauhan rendition for Gaurav Chatterjee).

Things touch an all-time low when in a hurried haphazard finale, Sheru cross-dresses and croons at a baddies’ night-out shoot-out. Early in the film, Sheru tells his cat “you are irritating me like a fly — a house fly”, in a declaration that comes to be true for the indiscreet or curious viewer.