Chopsticks Is A Big Letdown

BChopsticks(Netflix)

Starring Abhay Deol, Mithila Palkar, Vijay Raaz

Directed  by  Sachin Yardi

Rating:* ½(one and a half stars)

There  is a  vast  difference between  smart cinema and  smartass cinema. The  latter is designed by people who THINK they are  funny smart  sassy and  hip when they are none  of  these.

Chopticks ,sadly, belongs to the  latter category of  wannabe cinema that  doesn’t know where it wants  to be, or why  it is seeking to  prove its credentials  as  cinema in the  first place,  when in fact it could have easily been  a  short film, if anything at all.

But then it’s a free world. And  nowhere is the world freer than on the internet where anyone can  do anything  with no fear of  repercussions.

 Hence Chopsticks….you may want to know why this film is titled  in such a Chinese  way.For the answer  you have sit through the entire  unfunny romcom ,or  you may please refer to the  heroine who is  a ‘poverty tourism’ guide and speaks Mandarin fluently. Slow clap for Mithila Palkar for learning a foreign  language to be part  of a  script that is an inspired as  whatsaapp group chats , and that’s compliment to  the  film.

Abhay Deol returns to  acting after  quite a  while.  He  looks bored unconvinced and  hence unconvincing. I don’t blame him. If I had to  play this  role I’d ask for  extra money every day just to  drag myself  to the set. Deol  plays a part-time cook and  full-time crook named …don’t laugh… ‘Artiste’  who helps a young lost girl find her  brand new car after  it’s stolen  from a crowded  temple by a  thief  posing as  a good Samaritan.

 Incidentally  the  actor  playing the  brief role  of the car thief was funnier than the entire film put together.That  could be  because  the  scriptwriters’s sense  of humour seems  as bland  as  the  food that Deol seems to be making in the fully-furnished kitchen of  a half-constructed  building…

Oh,that’s a joke too: you know…culinary  creations in a half-built  building . Ha ha.

Now  try this from the laughter menu. A  goon(Vijay Raaz who  specializes playing flipped-out goons)  obsessed with a goat, makes one of his  debt defaulters sing  his  favourite song Zindagi ek safar hai suhana repeatedly in lieu of payment. There are blander  jokes here,  waiting to explode on  the unsuspecting  viewer. So  tread this  trippy trash of  a film at  your risk.

The one  bright spot is the  vivacious  spontaneous  Mithila Palkar . To her   role as the   waif-life fish-out-of-water Mumbaiyyakar named  Nirma(hence  a flurry  of  detergent jokes) she brings  an   honesty  and verve  clearly missing from the  film that takes  its  attempts at levitation too seriously.