Cirkus movie review: Unfunny and outdated, Rohit Shetty's brand of comedy touches a new low; Ranveer Singh can't save it
Cirkus movie review: Rohit Shetty's latest film might just be his worst work yet. Starring Ranveer Singh in double role, it fails to employ even one of him properly.
Should Rohit Shetty be apologising to Ranveer Singh fans for wasting an actor of his calibre in this mindless, dumb comedy? Or should he be apologising to his own fans for making such an outdated and unfunny film in the first place. His Golmaal worked in 2006. That was 16 years ago. But Shetty seem to be stuck in that era, still. With Cirkus, his comedy touches a new low and it's sad that we had to see Ranveer being a part of this. And mind you, this is Ranveer in a double role yet none could redeem a film this awful. Not that I went to watch Cirkus with any high hopes or expectations but did I expect the last film of 2022 to be this bad? Some trailers can be extremely deceptive.
Cirkus begins in the 1960-s where two pairs of orphans are adopted by two separate families -- one in Bangalore and one in Ooty. But doctor Joy Jamnadas (Murali Sharma) switches one twin for another for the sake of an experiment through which he wants to prove his theory that 'upbringing' matters more than 'bloodlines'. Roy and Joy (Ranveer Singh and Varun Sharma in double roles) are doing their own stuff in different towns as kids and then grown up men. Roy in Ooty is married to Mala (Pooja Hegde), while Roy in Bangalore in dating Bindu (Jacqueline Fernandez). Joy is so far happy just being the third wheel everywhere his brother goes. Sadly, this comedy of errors just doesn't work.
The first half is so average that you can easily afford a few power naps. Cut to post interval, when the chaos starts to set in with everyone trying to make sense of things, it gets even more unfunny. It's all too loud, garish and blah. In the name of period comedy, we see everyone dressed in outlandish clothes from the '60s with tacky headbands, printed fabrics, strange accessories and weird hairdos.
There are endless characters in the film. Each one more colourful than the other. And everyone is overacting beyond one's imagination. There are some bad men too, extremely funny looking ones and they don't even make you laugh. Rather they start looking annoying after a point. With so much happening and everyone trying so hard, comedy is nowhere to be seen or felt.
Ranveer, in a somewhat restrained act, is doing whatever he has been briefed to do but the impact is totally missing. He is trying to be funny and it's evident but his jokes, whatever little there are, just don't land. 'The electric man' as he is fondly called in Ooty for his ability to bear any voltage of current, we never feel that current in his performance. Varun, who's aced the art of comedy and is super with his comic timing, fails to add any value to this period comedy. I wonder why did Shetty not think of leveraging that side of him instead of making him look totally bland and out of his zone. Pooja, whose last Hindi release was Radhe Shyam, needs serious acting lessons, I repeat. Her screen presence is so forgettable that you instead notice the set decor in the scenes she features. Jacqueline is no better here and doesn't get to do much other than be just a prop adding some glam quotient.
Sanjay Mishra as Bindu's motormouth and irritatingly fashionable father might look like the most promising one out of the bunch but he ends up being a headache with that screeching accent. Then there's a local thief, Momo (Siddhartha Jadhav - I loved him in Simmba and Sooryavanshi as sub-Inspector Santosh Tawade), but Cirkus reduces him to such a poorly caricaturish character with weird hairdo who's only making funny faces. Momo idolises Polson Bhai (Johnny Lever), who brings nothing great to the table than being an addition to this silly bunch of bad guys. It doesn't end here. There are at least 10 more supporting actors, each having a little part to play, and Rohit makes them all look funny even when not needed.
The kind of laughter audiences are used to watching in a Rohit Shetty film, I can barely recall one scene in Cirkus that could evoke a genuine laugh. Deepika Padukone’s cameo in the song Current Laga Re might compensate for all the missing fun, but that's too little too late.
Cirkus is based on William Shakespeare's play The Comedy of Errors. I would leave you with that thought and let this sink in as it may take a while. Watch it only if you are an ardent Ranveer Singh fan and can muster the courage to watch him get so terribly wasted.