2016 The End movie Review: Little Film With A Big Message!

Movie Review: Nostradamus has a new avatar, And  it is such a  pleasure to see Tom Alter  just weeks after his death, surface in this film  as a doomsday prophet. Alter plays a frazzled scientist whom our four young restless protagonists Harshad Chopra, Divyendu Sharma, Kiku Sharda(of the Kapil Sharma fame) befriend in the  middle of the road.

Movie: 2016 The End

Starring: Harshad Chopra, Divyendu Sharma, Kiku Sharda, Priya Bannerjee

Written & Directed by: Jaideep Chopra

Rating:***(3 stars)

Alter ominously dies after predicting that the world would end in  seven days, triggering off ‘we-must-live-out-our-dreams-before-the-end’  yearning in our quartet of protagonists. To these intellectually challenged  revellers living it up means  shopping in a  mall using the rich friend’s  credit card, and dancing in item songs with firangi girls who look like they wouldn’t mind if the world ends provided their gyrations get past the censor board.

The quartet take  of from Goa with a mysterious cop(the very talented Narendra Jha) on their heels. On the way they encounter a series of madcap adventures including an attempt made on Divyendu Sharma to abduct and forcibly marry  him to a girl who sits with her baraat in the wilderness waiting for her groom to descend.

It’s a bizarre idea in a film that breezes brazenly  through a blizzard of  bizarre incidents. Many of then are clumsily incorporated  into the plot.And some of them(like Supriya Karnik doinga  50 Shades Of Grey on Kiku Sharda or RahulRoy making a  belated appearance , and I am talking about 15 year late) just don’t work.

On the plus side, the four protagonists antics though frequently annoying , are miraculously freed  of vulgarity.  You may get an occasional fart joke to deal with. But that’s about it. Also,the film has a lush saturated look to it that goes well with the theme of  hedonism during times of doom.

Writer-director Jaideep Chopra has a novel idea up his sleeve. As he unrolls the proceedings the film shifts gears between  a road movie and a heist-adventure, doffing its hat to such maestros of the two genres as Farhan/ZoyaAkhtar(Dil Chahta Hai, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara) and Tigmanshu Dhulia(Bullett Raja).

The four main players range from the solidly adept Divyendu Sharma(last seen as Akshay Kumar’s scene-stealing brother in Toilet Ek Prem Katha) to the  poker-faced tv actor  Harshad Chopra(who seems clueless to his presence in the film).  Kiku Sharda whose drag act on The Kapil Sharma Show  is a winner, is here dragged down by a script that insists on making endless jokes about his ample girth.

Kiku  Sharda’s track with his godman-father had the potential  to grow into an interesting comedy of errors based on the opposition between fake godliness and genuine horniness. However Jaideep Chopra picks on interesting strands in the storytelling and lets them loose  in the plot.

This is a fidgety film full of half-finished  gags. But nonetheless  2016 The End is a wacky apocalyptic comedy with some very competent actors pitching in sportingly . Narendra Jha’s closing monologue on why we need to live one day a time is where the film finally comes into its own.

By then  it’s too late.