Director: Ravi Jadhav
Cast: Riteish Deshmukh, Nargis Fakhri, Dharmesh Yelande, Ram Menon, Aditya Kumar, Luke Kenny
Rating: 4 Star Rating: Recommended (1.2/5)
Popular Marathi filmmaker Ravi Jadhav (Balgandharva, Balak Palak, Timepass) aims big for his Hindi directorial debut. He wants Banjo to be a film celebrating the talent of the forgotten street musicians, a romance, a buddy comedy and a big musical. Of the lot it only succeeds as a film that presents the male bonhomie and verbal swag in the slums of Mumbai. Put Taraat (Riteish Deshmukh), an extortionist cum musician-singer, and his band members Paper (Aditya Kumar), Grease (Dharmesh Yelande) and Vaaja (Ram Menon) on screen together and the film comes alive. Give Nargis Fakhri a standalone scene, even worse one attempting drama, and things fall apart.
The part though is tailor-made for Fakhri; she is Chris, a New York-based Indian-American musician who comes to Mumbai in search of a talented banjo band to make two tracks. Jadhav is aware that Fakhri is easy on the eyes and so the many scenes where Chris dresses in shorts and goes to a slum where she is ogled at by both men and women. But he chooses to ignore that she is limited in thespian skills. So much so that even the romance between Chris and Taraat, who is her tour guide, falls flat. After a point it feels like even the filmmakers acknowledge the lack of chemistry and give up on the two.
Banjo is best enjoyed when it sticks to the real rather than the fantastical. The film briefly looks at the fraught lives of Taraat and his friends who can't sustain themselves by being musicians alone, a stark reality for many performing artists in India, and forced to have day jobs by the side. It touches upon how artists are always asked to perform for free or cut their fee. The grimy backdrop of a seaside slum lends itself well to further highlight their condition.
But Jadhav and his writers struggle to hold the many pieces together - an underdeveloped guru-shisya relationship, a hastily resolved band rivalry, a builder eyeing slum for redevelopment - or explain how Chris influences their musical talent. The quick leap to show the band performing at a posh venue seems utterly contrived. Deshmukh shuttles between being a drunk and shaking his long, wavy hairdo like Zakir Hussein but as the leading man he lacks the charisma to lift this plodding film. The need to randomly show Taraat as a fighter seem like a desperate attempt to reach out to the Lai Bhaari crowd, the biggest Marathi films until Sairat came along.
For a film about music none of the tracks scored by Vishal-Shekhar make an impression, with a few being indistinguishable from the other thanks to Jadhav's extravagant staging and Bosco-Caesar's uninspiring choreography. Banjo limps to its 137-minute running time leaving the viewers not high on great music but low on a listless outing.
Cast: Riteish Deshmukh, Nargis Fakhri, Dharmesh Yelande, Ram Menon, Aditya Kumar, Luke Kenny
Rating: 4 Star Rating: Recommended (1.2/5)
Popular Marathi filmmaker Ravi Jadhav (Balgandharva, Balak Palak, Timepass) aims big for his Hindi directorial debut. He wants Banjo to be a film celebrating the talent of the forgotten street musicians, a romance, a buddy comedy and a big musical. Of the lot it only succeeds as a film that presents the male bonhomie and verbal swag in the slums of Mumbai. Put Taraat (Riteish Deshmukh), an extortionist cum musician-singer, and his band members Paper (Aditya Kumar), Grease (Dharmesh Yelande) and Vaaja (Ram Menon) on screen together and the film comes alive. Give Nargis Fakhri a standalone scene, even worse one attempting drama, and things fall apart.
The part though is tailor-made for Fakhri; she is Chris, a New York-based Indian-American musician who comes to Mumbai in search of a talented banjo band to make two tracks. Jadhav is aware that Fakhri is easy on the eyes and so the many scenes where Chris dresses in shorts and goes to a slum where she is ogled at by both men and women. But he chooses to ignore that she is limited in thespian skills. So much so that even the romance between Chris and Taraat, who is her tour guide, falls flat. After a point it feels like even the filmmakers acknowledge the lack of chemistry and give up on the two.
Banjo is best enjoyed when it sticks to the real rather than the fantastical. The film briefly looks at the fraught lives of Taraat and his friends who can't sustain themselves by being musicians alone, a stark reality for many performing artists in India, and forced to have day jobs by the side. It touches upon how artists are always asked to perform for free or cut their fee. The grimy backdrop of a seaside slum lends itself well to further highlight their condition.
But Jadhav and his writers struggle to hold the many pieces together - an underdeveloped guru-shisya relationship, a hastily resolved band rivalry, a builder eyeing slum for redevelopment - or explain how Chris influences their musical talent. The quick leap to show the band performing at a posh venue seems utterly contrived. Deshmukh shuttles between being a drunk and shaking his long, wavy hairdo like Zakir Hussein but as the leading man he lacks the charisma to lift this plodding film. The need to randomly show Taraat as a fighter seem like a desperate attempt to reach out to the Lai Bhaari crowd, the biggest Marathi films until Sairat came along.
For a film about music none of the tracks scored by Vishal-Shekhar make an impression, with a few being indistinguishable from the other thanks to Jadhav's extravagant staging and Bosco-Caesar's uninspiring choreography. Banjo limps to its 137-minute running time leaving the viewers not high on great music but low on a listless outing.
0 comments:
Post a Comment