Movie Review: ‘Joker’

With an average music score and a trailer that gives the full story out, Shirish Kunder�۪s ��Joker�۪ (2012) can in no way build up expectations if one purely looks at that. But consider the cast of Akshay Kumar with his lucky charm Sonakshi Sinha by his side once again after the super successful ��Rowdy Rathore�۪ (2012) and ones expectations from ��Joker�۪ might just reach a different level. Damaging these positive expectations is Shirish Kunder�۪s reputation of contributing to huge flops in the recent times like ��Tees Maar Khan�۪ (2010). What further makes it difficult for a director to deliver an effective and entertaining film to the audiences is when the director himself is involved in a number of aspects including production, editing, background music composition, screenplay and lyrics writing to name a few. His mentor and dear friend Farah Khan leads on the production front here but her real strength lies in direction while Kunder�۪s strength lies in editing.

Agastya (Kumar) is a scientist who has taken a big loan to build a machine to contact aliens and is in under extreme pressure to produce some results to continue his project and its funding. He gets a call from his village that his father is not well (which he is only faking) and his girlfriend Diva (Sinha) decides to follow him down as well on a journey to the village called Paglapur, aptly named as the town where once used to be the biggest mental hospital of India under the British rule who left the land as part of no states territory when the patients from the hospital escaped. Agastya is greeted by his brother Babban (Shreyas Talpade) who talks in a weird language that only he gets. The rest of the town is full of characters that are mentally challenged with a funny side to each of them. This self-sufficient town is suffering from a number of problems since they get no provisions from any neighbouring states.

Agastya comes up with the idea of using his knowledge of aliens and crop circles to create one in his village to attract media from around the world to his unknown and uncared for piece of land. He is successful in this endeavour but is faced with embarrassment when his competitor from America lands up to expose his farce plan. Just when the media is about the leave he creates alien costumes for villagers and parades them in the jungle to keep the media busy and sticking around. Paglapur is now the centre of a worldwide hype and all states star fighting for this piece of land giving Agastya exactly what he needed for his under-developed village. Does his second lie get caught again or are there real aliens coming down to pay a visit on call to his aliens communication machine? Well it is not that difficult to guess…

With an interesting storyline, especially with the positioning of Paglapur as land of no state, the potential could have been great for the sci-fi comedy that was originally meant to be released in 3D. But ��Joker�۪ fails on all ends. The graphics, visuals and cinematography for the aliens is laughable! For a movie made in 2012, an animation student could have done a better job. The screenplay is average with very few funny situational scenes along with below average dialogues with some fun one-liners to bring a smile to the audiences. The variety of characters is very good but their roles are very poorly developed and executed. Minisha Lamba as a reporter, Sinha as the leading lady, Talpade is the brother, all barely have any role in the film giving them no chance to shine. Talpade�۪s character Babban although plays a central role in the story, has one of the silliest roles every written in the history of Bollywood making him a laughing stock and open for criticism. Kumar is the most important and perhaps the one who the whole film has been written for and delivers a fairly decent performance.

Songs in the movie just land up in the middle of nowhere with a basic soundtrack and average background music score. The creative aspects of the design of aliens dresses are fun and will be enjoyed by kids for their colourful and tacky flavour. Cinematography and set designs are repetitive and average that fail to create an engaging scene-by-scene laydown.

With serious flaws and gaps in the script and under-developed characters, ��Joker�۪ although with a good concept idea, is designed for failure. This movie could have worked really well with the families especially in the summer off for the kids who would love the colourful aliens and the funny village setting of the film. If 3D would have been done along with marketing targeting the school audiences, ��Joker�۪ could have worked. But poor vision, direction and overall average work in all departments by Kunder leads to a mediocre final outcome. A quick guest appearance by Farah Khan herself is not good enough to save this film. ��Joker�۪ sure shows potential and room for it to be a good film with some elements in its favour but the wrong crew and execution could lead to a total downfall at the box office. The charm and charisma of Kumar will not be able to save this film. Skip this movie and one won�۪t miss a thing!