Guddu Rangeela

Rating : 5/10
Release Date : 3rd July, 2015
Time : 122 minutes
Director, Writer: Subhash Kapoor; Music : Hitesh Sonik
Starring : Arshad Warsi, Amit Sadh, Aditi Rao Hydari, Ronit Roy, Rajiv Gupta



It got too serious, especially in the second half, that too with a flawed plot

The first fifteen minutes were fun – an orchestra band run by Arshad Warsi (Rangeela) and Amit Sadh (Guddu), singing songs like Mata Ka Email for jagrans, scoping houses for robbers, Amit leching furiously while checking out the residence, sadhu’s enjoying a game of football, having posters of Messi, Ronaldo alongside their gods, robbery with funny masks, multiple robbers landing up on the same premises…it was all fun and games, making subtle points about the kind of society we’ve become…

Then arrives our villain (Ronit Roy), the man Arshad is seeking revenge against, a toughie who does the dirty work for our hypocritical, moralistic khaap panchayats, and the mood changes. Enter a new cop (Amit Sial), a new compulsion, a shady character, Dibyendu, a kind of informer, who has a simple plot for kidnapping a girl, Aditi, and solving all the problems in one go… but nothing is what it seems…

Till the end of the first half, things are nicely set-up. But then it rapidly begins to slide downhill. Gets too serious, too complicated and too flawed.

Arshad is very good in his comic moments, emotes well and is overall fine except when you suddenly make him a superhero type, beating / shooting a bunch of villains away – that just doesn’t seem right. Amit Sadh is good – he suits this side-kick kind of role, with the lechery, small town act, as is Aditi who moves from being hapless girl to being partner in crime with practiced ease. The whole romance between Aditi and Amit is rushed, quite unnecessary, doesn’t ring quite right. Dibyendu, for me, didn’t quite get his character right, but special mention of Rajiv Gupta, as the simple, fun-loving number two cop, who did and continued to be the entertainment quotient whenever on screen.

Unlike Subhash Kapoor’s previous film, Jolly LLB, which got the balance between humour, plot and seriousness right, this one flounders between the three, especially in the second half. There was a better story to be had with characters as richly drawn as Guddu Rangeela – one with a lot more fun and a lot more subtle points re the khaap panchayats, not the sledgehammer used in this one. I normally give an extra rating point, if the message is right / heart is in the right place, guess here am too disappointed to do so.