Firangi

Firangi Story: Set in 1921 pre-independent India, this limited budget period film is a languid love story served with a pinch of patriotism.

Firangi Review: One thing's clear. With his second outing in the movies, Kapil Sharma wants to desperately drive home a point that he has no interest in milking his comic talent in the movies.

While it's a ballsy move for a successful comedian to explore other genres, the question is, are his fans ready for it and can he do it convincingly? Not really, when he wears one expression (lack of interest) on his face, throughout the film.

Watching Kapil act innocent and robotically romance a much younger looking Ishita Dutta (last seen in Drishyam), who channels her inner Amrita Rao for almost three hours is hard to sit through. Unfortunately, the film's massive runtime is not its only drawback.

The plot is heavily borrowed from Lagaan. Like Bhuvan (Aamir Khan), Manga (Kapil Sharma) must lead a group of villagers to challenge a British officer Mark Daniels (Edward Sonnenblick, modelled on captain Russell) with the help of his kind romantic interest Shyamli (Monica Gill, like Russell's sister Elizabeth). Ishita Dutta plays Sargi, like Gracy Singh's character Gauri. Mark wants to forcibly vacate Sargi's village for financial gains and Manga must protect the land to win over Sargi's parents.

Even if you ignore the 'inspired content', a period film deserves to be made on a certain scale and with some authenticity. Firangi has neither. All villages look the same and you see the same 15 people roaming everywhere. The costumes and accents are inconsistent. The British sound American, a London returned Indian princess (Monica Gill) dresses and acts more British than the British. She speaks to her fellow Indians in English and with the British in Hindi. The evil Indian king (Kumud Mishra) is neither funny nor menacing. The only actors who look logical and put in some effort to their characters are Edward Sonnenblick and Anjan Srivastav (as Gandhi bhakt). They try to infuse some method to the unending madness.

Eventually, Firangi moves at a snail's pace leading us to a semi-fun climax. Sadly, the film doesn't even fall into 'so bad, it's good' category. It is outright boring and thus not even perversely entertaining.