*No Spoiler Alerts
What do we know about Ghanchakkar before watching the movie?
What the trailer suggests is that Emraan Hashmi’s character has a not-so-chic wife and a terrible memory. Along with 2 men, he robs a bank and then because of his poor memory, he is unable to recollect where all the stolen money has been hidden.
What more do we know after having seen Ghanchakkar?
Absolute NOTHING!
Review
I’m directly going to get to the point here – Ghanchakkar is one of the worst and most pointless movies that I have had the misfortune to have seen off late.
The director, Raj Kumar Gupta’s previous ventures namely – Aamir (remember soap superstar Rajiv Khandelwal and his mobile phone?!) and No One Killed Jessica would suggest a substantial credibility and make for an impressive portfolio. However, Ghanchakkar falls flat and would be one to forget even for Raj.
The Movie
The movie is marketed to be a comedy thriller. What one expects from this unusual genre is a strong narrative and sharp dialogues. However, Ghanchakkar fails on both fronts. The narrative, during the first half, isn’t very fast paced but grasps your attention for a majority of the time. In spite of its average pace, it lays a solid foundation for the second half and you expect a lot of ‘thrill’ and action and a fast-paced second half. All of it is lacking in the second half which is abrupt, unclear and just when the narrative needed to strengthen and the tower needed to be built higher, the stack of dominoes stumble and fall hard. The climax was as good as non-existent. There was opportunity all around to build a strong narrative, but the director and script writers couldn’t borrow a leaf out of Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani.
The Acting
The acting was substandard. Emraan Hashmi was extremely monotonous in expression and execution. In spite of having a signification screen time, there is nothing on offer that impresses and there isn’t anything that we haven’t seen before from him. Emraan Hashmi seems to be following the Imran Khan and Kristen Stewart school of single expression acting. Vidya Balan is a waste. We all know her potential having won the Best Actress Award three years in a row. But she clearly needs to get out of her sleazy, demeaning and now annoying Dirty Picture phase where cleavage show and sexy talk defines her characters and interviews. Her role in the movie was that of Emraan Hashmi’s wife – a punjaban whose life is defined by fashion faux pas. Her character didn’t have much scope or definition and didn’t quite serve the purpose of adding a comedy angle, as the plan would have been.
Special mention for the terrible dialogues. They were horrid, as far from witty as possible and annoyingly repetitive.
I feel terrible that I am actually spending all this time writing about such a bad movie, but I’m just trying to save you some money and vent out my frustration at having wasted mine. If you want to get back at someone, I’d suggest you ask them to watch Ghanchakkar. It would serve your purpose effectively.
RATING : ★☆☆☆☆
Verdict : (Definitely NOT Recommended)