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Shah Rukh Khan has undoubtedly redeemed himself with Fan, post his Dilwale fiasco. And even though I love the starstruck innocence and the mamooli-ness of Gaurav, post interval the film just makes no sense. It’s a mystery how Maneesh Sharma managed to lose the plot in this double SRK dhamaka, and here’s everything left me scratching my head.
A naïve, beguiling and sweetly delusional Gaurav goes from being a diehard fan to a revenge seeking, expertly disguised criminal. How does a simple middle-class guy turn on his own god with such hate, all for a ‘sorry’? You could’ve given the chap a more substantial reason to go nuts, no?
Mummy called her raja beta Gaurav all the time in Mumbai to enquire about khana peena. How come she never called when he was wreaking havoc in London and Dubrovnik? Daddy who even packed Gaurav’s underwear and played along with his infatuation on stage, not once told him to stop and think about what he’s doing? Now how is that middle class Mr Director?
Why was it so hard for Aryan’s fans, the cops, the media to believe that the superstar could have an imposter? From being a global icon, Aryan Khanna came tumbling down to being a creep and a criminal, even though there was proof that he was in his apartment when Gaurav took over Madame Tussauds. How is this even possible in a world where surveillance and social media spare no one? What about all the guards who followed the cocky superstar everywhere? Hey, did everyone forget that Aryan Khanna’s rival Sid Kapoor had actually met the crazy Gaurav first hand, and so had the Mumbai Police cops who beat him up?
Ok, Aryan Khanna surely wasn’t playing a Bollywood superstar in the film. Maybe he was from some joke of an industry, in a parallel universe somewhere. Why? Well, because even the most insignificant ‘failed actors’ of Bollywood have bigger egos than him. Why would a superstar put up with a ‘you are late and you cost a bomb’ kinda talk from a pompous rich guy? This one Maneesh bhai, was simply ridiculous and even Shah Rukh told us that he would’ve punched the guy, if he was playing himself on-screen.
Gaurav sold a shack of a shop in West Delhi and travelled across Europe for months! This after you told us that the only way he could’ve travelled to Mumbai was if he won prize money at his colony’s talent competition? Chalo iske liye maaf kiya. But how did this happen- from a kid who flunked school year after year, and only knew a few words of English, how did Gaurav turn into a suave English speaking disguise expert, who picks up languages easily, that too one as complex as Croatian?
Well, nitpicking it might be, but I’m tired of leaving my dimaag at home. Maneesh bhai, thoda zyada ho gaya, agli baar theek theek lagaa lena.
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