Cast: Kapil Sharma, Ishita Dutta, Monica Gill
Director: Rajiv Dhingra
Genre: Comedy
Rating: Two stars
A caper set in 1920s Punjab is hardly the kind of cinematic outing one envisions from a stand-up comic seeking an alternative career as a movie actor. Firangi, Kapil Sharma's second big-screen venture, is unusual all right in terms of substance, but the concoction that the film rustles up is overlong and dreary. It's a case of ill-advised overreach. The makers (the lead actor is himself the producer) would have done themselves - and the audience - a massive favour had they set greater store by full-on farce than by shrill, scrappy drama.
Manga falls in love with a village girl Sargi (Ishita Dutta) even as he gets unwittingly sucked into a nefarious plan hatched by a rapacious royal, Raja Indraveer Singh (Kumud Mishra), and a corrupt English official Mark Daniels (Edward Sonnenblick). The villainous duo wants to grab an entire hamlet, evict its residents and build a foreign liquor factory there.
Sargi's father (Rajesh Sharma, way too good for this film) takes a shine to Manga, but the latter finds himself out of favour with the girl's Gandhian grandpa (Aanjjan Srivastav), who will have nothing to do with an Indian who works for the British. With his back to the wall, Manga resorts to a mix of lies, tall claims, earthy optimism and no-holds-barred frivolity in order to outwit the evil forces that are arraigned against him.
The lead actor frequently hits the right notes as a funnyman - he is undeniably good at his core job - but as a lover boy seeking to charm us into submission he does not cut much ice. For the failings of the film, Kapil Sharma is as much to blame - not being aware of one's limitations is the worst misstep that an actor can take - as the sloppy screenplay that displays no inclination whatsoever to go beyond the Bollywood cliches about the British and the co-opted Indian aristocracy. Subtlety is totally alien to Firangi.
It isn't all that different for the other characters, including the hero, who plays a man who can cure a backache by kicking the patient on the bum. The bloated Firangi is in need of a similar miracle, but no kick on the backside can correct its wayward course.
Ishita Dutta and Monica Gill, as the hero's love interest and an Oxford-educated princess respectively, strut around aimlessly. Dutta's character is a sketchily etched, dolled-up lass who mopes and pines her way through the film.
In the end - Firangi takes painfully long to get to that point, by which time the audience that has survived the rigmarole thus far is beyond caring - is a terribly tepid affair. Neither the comic potential at the core of the film nor the energy of Kapil Sharma's antics is enough to pull it out of the irremediable mess it degenerates into. Firangi might have been harmless fun if only it had stopped short of running so hopelessly amok.
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