‘Lafangey Parindey’ comes up empty - Movie Review
August 22, 2010
Starring Deepika Padukone, Neil Nitin Mukesh
He boxes blindfolded, she's a blind dancer. He teaches her to see, she teaches him to feel—at least, that's what the movie tries, and fails, to convey. In fact, there's very little feeling in this latest glossy romance to come out of the Yash Raj production house.
The problems begin with the casting. The elegant Deepika Padukone was perfect as the dreamy starlet in Om Shanti Om (2007) and a chic urbanite in Love Aaj Kal (2009), but here she's too polished and put-together to pull off a rough-around-the-edges, working-class girl. And Neil Nitin Mukesh—who was gripping as a scared-witless college student in the terrorist thriller New York (2009)—looks more like Bambi than a boxer.
That's not to say that Mukesh's dewy doe eyes and flawless bone structure doom him to play innocent boys-next-door. He's done gritty before and done it well—as a thief in the film noir Johnny Gaddaar (2007) and as a tortured prisoner in Jail (2009). In fact, those roles were likely deliberate moves on his part to prove he can play tough despite his appearance.
But the Yash Raj lens emphasizes Mukesh's sweet, squeaky-clean qualities—as it tends to do with everything. The Yash Raj world is a rosy place—the colors are brighter, life more festive, and the people more charming than they are in reality. That isn't necessarily a bad thing—it can be great entertainment, which the studio has proven with many movies over the years—but when you're doing a film set in Mumbai's rough-and-tumble back streets, it feels phony. And it's a missed opportunity to capture the nuances of that microcosm.
It's a challenge to connect to such unlikely characters in a superficial setting, as evidenced by the fact that the characters don't connect to each other. The actors flounder with their static parts, and even they seem bored with the plot. Mukesh spends as much time blankly staring off into space as his co-star does.
"One Shot" Nandu (Mukesh) is a street punk in a motorcycle gang who boxes for a local crime boss. He's blindfolded in every fight and takes plenty of blows, blood gushing from his nose and mouth, before knocking out his opponents with a single punch. (Afterward, amazingly, there are barely any marks marring his cutie-pie face.) While running errands for his boss, he accidentally hits Pinky (Padukone) with his car and flees the scene. She's blinded by the accident—but that doesn't stop her for a second from pursuing her dream of getting on the TV show "India's Got Talent" with her roller-skating dance routine. Wracked with guilt but unable to confess he's the culprit, Nandu helps her adjust to blindness and becomes her dance partner. Meanwhile, Nandu's boss lords the secret over him and a dogged cop won’t give up looking for the perpetrator of the hit-and-run.
The climax is utterly predictable and the neat resolution manages to stretch plausibility.
Lafangey Parindey is rated Skip.
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