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The catch with this mildly engaging film, with a good supporting cast, is that it is way too long. Kapil Sharma is convincing as a young Punjabi munda, eyeing at a blushing Sargi (Ishita Dutta).
Kapil Sharma, also the producer of the film fashions a good fit for himself. This time on the big screen, he goes back to the past, at a time when India was under the British rule, with wily rajas aiming to wriggle out of paying tax and a set of villagers wanting to outsmart the ‘goras’.
Yes, you experienced this in Lagaan. In this reduced version, Sharma plays Manga who is a jobless fellow with a disarming smile but who is good pals with a bright-eyed ‘tange-wala’ (Inamulhaq). He romances a blushing ‘gaon ki gori’ and beats the evil guys at their own game. He is a family-oriented, family-friendly man who is respectful to his elders. Poles apart from the crass Kapil Sharma of the comedy nights show, which he wants to put behind himself for obvious reasons.
This Kapil Sharma and Ishita Dutta starrer is slightly engaging. The setting aimed to be in the 1920s, is all created on set, but one does at the start manage to ignore the meticulously crafted mud huts probably because the language spoken is real and the gidda is homespun just like the costumes of the cast. The greedy whitey (Sonnenblick) is not that bad, even if he sounds more American than British, and there’s some enjoyment to be had with Mishra taking the performance a notch higher as the local ruler with a large harem, and a haughty daughter who says she went to Oxford, no less.
However, it goes on and on. And on. It does slows down post interval as the engagement begins to diminish, even when the in-awe-of-the-`firangi’-male protagonist comes to his own proud ‘desi’ roots.
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