The Legend of Michael Mishra Review {1.5/5} & Review Rating
They say that the only thing constant in this world is change. This week's release THE LEGEND OF MICHAEL MISHRA sees its protagonist (Arshad Warsi) bring about a drastic change in his life. Will this 'change' bring about any results at the box-office or will the audiences remain indifferent towards the film, let's analyze.
The film starts off with FP aka Full Pant (Boman Irani), the owner of 'Michael Mishra Dhaba', telling a bunch of tourists about the 'legendary' greatness of Michael Mishra (Arshad Warsi). FP then, recalls the entire flashback incidents that transformed a simple tailor Michael Mishra into a 'tailor-made' Michael Mishra. FP states that, Michael Mishra, when on duty as a tailor, accidentally kills his customer. What follows after that are series of incidents that transforms the simple Michael Mishra into a dreaded don, who becomes a self confessed 'kidnapping specialist'. But when Michael Mishra ultimately finds his lady love Varsha 'Hello' Shukla (Aditi Rao Hydari) after years of incessant searching, he plans to change himself into a better human being, at her 'insistence'. The very moment he decides to change himself, he surrenders himself before the law, which then, punishes him with an imprisonment of a whopping 500 years, which, later, gets changed to lifetime imprisonment in a ruthless jail. Amidst all this, Michael Mishra's sidekick Half Pant (Kyroze Irani) stands by him like a rock. Does Michael Mishra ever muster the courage to tell those three magic words to Varsha Shukla, does Varsha Shukla selflessly tell Michael Mishra to change his lifestyle or is it more than what meets the eye is what forms the rest of the film.
The film's screenplay (Manish Jha) is extremely poor and immature in totality. One fails to decipher as to what exactly was the director planning to tell the audience through the film. Added to that, is the sub-standard story (Manish Jha, Radhakrishnan, Sneha Nihalani), which only goes to prove the adage that 'Too many cooks, spoil the broth'.
The film's director Manish Jha (who had made films like MATRUBHOOMI and ANWAR) lands up doing a shabby job with THE LEGEND OF MICHAEL MISHRA. Even the presence of a seasoned actor in the form of Arshad Warsi, was just not good enough to salvage the film from drowning. The film has a shaky start, and continues to wobble till the end. What really works in the favour of the film is the sudden twist (in the second half).
As far as the performances are concerned, Arshad Warsi disappoints the viewer with his performance. His disconnect with his part is pretty evident as the film progresses. Even though the director has infused many of Arshad Warsi's trademarked comedy and mannerisms, the sad part is that, all of this does nothing to the film. It lands up looking like a caricature and a parody of all his previous roles! Aditi Rao Hydari, knowingly or unknowingly, lands up looking totally outspaced in the entire film. Even though Kyroze Irani tries to do a 'Circuit' act, he fails miserably. Boman Irani, in a cameo is just about bearable.
While the film's music (Meet Bros Anjjan, Som-Raul, Abhinav Bansal, Rishi-Siddharth, Ujjwal-Nikhil) is pretty average, the background score (Rishi-Siddharth) is comparatively decent.
The film's cinematography (Manoj Soni) is decent. The film's editing (Nipun Ashok Gupta) also happens to be one of the villains of the film (the others being poor story and lacklustre screenplay, as told earlier).
On the whole, THE LEGEND OF MICHAEL MISHRA offers absolutely nothing new to the cine goers and has an extremely disjointed narrative. The film is bound to struggle at the box-office.
