Let's get this one thing out of the way: I'm not a Rohit Shetty fan.
Our perception of humor just doesn't align. But I've found myself rewatching films like Golmaal 3 quite a few times; you know why? Because when there's no logic or nuances being offered, you can at the very least bank on being entertained. And the Golmaal franchise does that very efficiently.
But Shetty's latest Ranveer Singh-starrer film, Cirkus falls flat at the entertainment front too. Here are my honest thoughts after watching the film:
1. Set in Ooty, the film begins in Jamnadas Ashram, an orphanage run by a doctor and his brother, named Roy and Joy where they have two sets of orphaned twins named A square and B square. It's these character names that convince me that the screenwriters must have been intoxicated while working on the script (further in the film, a gang of thieves are named Momo, Mango and Chikki).
This doctor comes up with an experiment to separate the twins and pair each of them with the other set.
When his brother questions him about the ethics of the experiment and potential consequences if they ever find out, he answers, "Tu fikr mat kar, mein sab sambhaal lunga." Sounds quite overconfident for a guy with no plan making irreversible alterations to four people's lives!
2. Cirkus is in a different vein than every other Rohit Shetty film, in more ways than one. Instead of cars flying all over, people do the flying here. After the pace quickens, we are introduced to the adult versions of the brothers. Ranveer Singh plays the twins called Roy, one based in Ooty and the other in Bangalore. The former runs a circus with his "brother", Joy (Varun Sharma, also in a double role).
Shetty treats the circus scenes as his playground, trying to give his signature flare to the stunts and tricks. But all of it translates to endless sensory overload. It's like I'm being punished for paying to watch this film.
3. Since the film's release on Friday (23 December), many have called it one of the worst color-graded films ever - and I'd like to testify to that. The oversaturation might have permanently hampered my eyes. The art direction, in its entirety, is so shoddily done that the production design of both Ooty and Bangalore looks like one doll house in different colours.
4. This leads us to the first song where one Roy romances Mala (Pooja Hegde) in Ooty while another woos Bindu (Jacqueline Fernandez) in Bangalore.
The film has put so little effort in differentiating the twins that the women's only role in the song is to help the audience identify which brother is on screen. And honestly, that says a lot about female representation in Rohit Shetty's body of work.
5. We are introduced to Bindu's obnoxiously rich father, played by Sanjay Mishra who I thoroughly enjoy watching...except in Cirkus. His exaggerated mannerisms and sing-song dialogues get too annoying too fast. His elitism is expressed by insults like "You low society" while he affectionately calls his assistant "my honest puppy". Jokes like "Let me call my pre-historic pandit" are so bad that I force myself to laugh, just to feel something.
6. It's wild how it's about to be 2023 and Bollywood's favorite brand of humor is still poking fun at the fat character's expense. Rohit Shetty's brand of humor has never been kind to any oppressed communities whatsoever - so the fatphobia in Cirkus is not surprising, just painfully exhausting and acutely unfunny.
7. This film has all but one Muslim character - a jeweler - and every dialogue he has is just him doing shayari. I'm sorry, is this supposed to be funny? Such blatant stereotyping and for what reason?!
8. By the time Deepika Padukone makes an appearance in the song, Current Laga Re, I'm so deep in the pits of frustration and brain-melt that even her refreshing presence doesn't do much to save this trainwreck of a film.
9. Veteran comedy actors keep dropping in, attempting to enliven the audience. We are introduced to Johnny Lever's character, who appears to be the ringleader of the gang of thieves. Upon asking Momo what has transpired, he points to the moon. A montage of the chase sequences start playing on the moon. I remain unamused, internally begging the theatre lights to switch on and announce the end of this film.
10. The Roy who runs the circus believes that he is immune to electric shocks, not knowing that every time he interacts with electricity, his twin in Bangalore gets the shocks instead. This results in several horrifyingly unfunny scenes of Roy having electric-induced seizures, touching someone else by accident and transmitting the shock to them. Towards the end of the film, a chain of people get transmitted and they have seizures to the song, Piya Tu Ab To Aaja (Monica, Oh My Darling). It is at this point that I start dissociating to another realm - anything to escape this unbearable monstrosity.
11. The doctor, who has been following the two brothers all this while and passively watching all hell break loose, finally intervenes and comes out with the truth. He's once again asked about the ethics of his experiment, leading him to embark on a stale monologue.
He defends his (objectively immoral) actions by saying that his experiment was an attempt to eradicate the stigma that orphans and adopted children face. He brings up nuances of nurture over nature, convincing the brothers that this was the best thing that could have happened to them.
12. The film is peppered with self-references to multiple other Rohit Shetty films like Singham but Cirkus FINALLY ends with a redeemable Golmaal reference, putting an end to my misery.
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