Game Movie Review: More of a shame

What happens when you have a well-known ad filmmaker and a producer duo known to be sensible in their choice of projects, come together? Added to it you know that the film also boasts of an interesting star cast and has a budget that’s certainly not bad at all. Common sense would usually make you expect the project to be at least something that can easily be described as ‘safe’ right? You would be right most of the time maybe but this weekend with ‘Game’ conventional wisdom goes for a toss as we are cruelly treated to a very bad April Fool’s joke.

Director Abhinay Deo has been in the news of late with his 2 movies- Gameand Delhi Belly getting ready almost in quick succession. With producers- Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani around and with a star cast comprising of Abhishek Bachchan, Kangna Ranaut, Boman Irani, Jimmy Shergill, Shahana Goswami and introducing Sarah Jane Dias to Bollywood (she was earlier seen in the Tamil movie- Theeradha Vilayattu Pillai), one expected a time pass film at the least. With 3 days of its theatrical run over and judging by the box office performance so far (now please don’t blame the WC finals, Vashu Bhagnani’s F.A.L.T.U released the same day has done far, far better so far), I’m sure the entire team of Game must be wondering who will take the blame.

For those wondering what the story is (by now I’m sure most people are aware anyway) let me tell you that the film starts with Kabir Malhotra ( Anupam Kher ), a billionaire tycoon inviting 4 people to his island home in Samos, Greece. The four people include Neil Menon (Abhishek Bachchan), a casino owner in Istanbul, Deepak Kapoor (Jimmy Shergill), a leading Bollywood actor, O.P Ramsay (Boman Irani ), a Prime Ministerial candidate in Thailand and Tisha Khanna, a journalist in London. Malhotra startles all of them by disclosing some hidden secret connecting all of them together. He even mentions that he’s called the International Vigilance Squad (IVS) to come over the next day and arrest Neil, Ramsay and Deepak for their wrong doings. Since they are all trapped they reluctantly stay over in the island. But that’s when Malhotra is found dead in his study.

Enter Sia Agnihotri ( Kangna Ranaut ) from the IVS and the lame game begins. To be honest there are a few things which are note-worthy in the film. Shot across eye-catching locations in Istanbul, Bangkok, London and Greece (apart from Mumbai of course), the film’s cinematography by Karthik Vijay does do justice to the locales. The opening credits roll down slickly and the slickness shows throughout the film. But these elements are too little to make an impact that’s enough to make you forget the issues associated with the film. The choice of the subject in itself (story and screenplay credited to Althea Delmas Kaushal) is not something that one can appreciate. Reminding you of Soham Shah’s Luck on one hand and so many whodunits otherwise, the subject would put a lot of mystery lovers into a tizzy with such a dull, not so inspiring theme. Loosely based on Agatha Christie’s And There Were None, this one doesn’t do any justice to the source of inspiration.

Then there are the mandatory twists and turns coming at regular moments during the film, but none of them really surprise you actually. So when Neil Menon makes a turnaround and mentions his real identity to Sia Agnihotri, half the audience seems to have already realized it and anyways no one seemed to really care for it. That in it self shows how badly Abhinay Deo has failed in his attempt to hook the audience. People fly all the way to Greece on just receiving a letter- ah! I wish life were as simple though. And what’s with the constant reference to Samos as if its Patna or Mysore and everyone is aware of the place? Watching the film would make you feel its easy to break into the office of the forthcoming Prime Minister in a foreign country or hop about continents without ever troubling the law enforcing agencies even a little bit. I can go on and on about the loopholes in the film, but then the list would be long and probably endless . Music by Shankar- Ehsaan- Loy again is not of the type that one can ideally accept in a film like this. Chances are unlikely that one would go on to remember any of the songs after the movie is out of the theatres (which shouldn’t be long btw).

Talking about characters- Boman Irani tends to go a bit overboard in his antics as the wannabe PM, while Jimmy Shergill’s character is completely half baked and has nothing much to do. Shahana Goswami’s character seems to be deliberately shown as slightly mysterious, what with her addiction to liqour etc but nothing of that is explained in detail and she just hangs in there somewhere in the plot. Gauhar Khan does a decent job and for Anupam Kher, such roles do not challenge him in any ways. Kangna Ranaut plays the angry young lady cop who simply throws her weight around her deputy. With an organization titled IVS and with Kangna throwing more focus on her looks than her accent, you know how it would go all the way. Surprisingly for someone who starts so aggressively after the turnaround by Abhishek , she allows him to completely occupy centre stage and gladly steps aside.

Sarah Jane Dias, a former Miss India and Channel [V] VJ was being highlighted enough in the promos but truth be said, doesn’t really have much to do in the film. Especially with hardly any dialogues given one cannot say much about her in the film. But maybe all the pre-release talk about her should result in her getting noticed more in the coming days. But pray why did she have to wear that hideous looking wig in the Mehki Mehki song, which was her showcase in the film? Coming to Abhishek Bachchan, well he seems to have tried to be as natural as he could be in the film, what with the reference to his love for European Soccer (Chelsea ), tongue in cheek way of talking etc. But all that would have probably been noticed and maybe even appreciated, if the film in itself was endearing enough.

At the end when you walk out after the movie is over, you ask yourself how did this April Fool joke of a movie get made in the 1st place and if the people associated with the film are so blind or thoughtless.

Bottomline- Game is definitely a lame excuse of a film that’s a shame considering the people behind it.

Originally published in PFC- http://passionforcinema.com/game-movie-review-more-of-a-shame/