Coffee With D Is  Fun In A Ditzy Way : Movie Review

Starring: Sunil Grover, Zakir Hussain, Anjana Sukhani, Deepannati Sharma, Pankaj Tripathy

Directed by: Vishal Mishra

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Isn’t it amazing what a slew of talented actors can do to an outrageous idea? Think of Coffee With D as a boys’ day out with Dawood, and you will actually enjoy the implausible goings on.

This is a what-if idea carried to an extreme of satirical eventuality but laced with lots humour and saved from a catastrophic plunge to inanity by actors who know how to hold thedialogues even

when

the words run all over the place.

Coffee With D suffers from  a fundamental flaw. It presumes that a film about a clash between ‘Dawood’ and ‘Arnab’(the Gangster and the Newshound ) would generate instant drama.

It does.And it doesn’t. While Sunil Grover makes an interesting getaway from his comic avatar on television to play the vociferous newshound with straightfaced selfimportance,Zakir Hussain’s Dawood is priceless, a

nd

far more goofy funny

and

sinister in a trashy kind of way, than Rishi Kapoor in Nikhil Advani’s D Company which was about a bunch of RAW officer yanking Dawood out of his hideout.

Years of playing the romantic loverboy made Rishi Kapoor’s Dawood look like a plump brat.Zakir Hussain is both sinister and satirical.

Pankaj Tripathy

that camera chameleon,

as Dawood’s right-hand man shows a  rare understanding of how funny the business of extortion can be when the man in-charge has a phone that needs constant re-charging.And Anjana Sukhani as Grover’s spirited sassy pregnant wife is a bagful of fun.

I wish these actors had more in the plot to chew on. The story is a oneliner.Once ‘Arnab’ decides to get ‘D’ for an interview the film flounders with the pacing.

Many parts  of the film read like episodes from a web series.

The second-half is devoted entirely to the one-on-one between the dreaded gangster and  the aggressive newshound.

What could have been a hard-hitting interface is drastically diluted with words and sentences beeped out  by the censors.This is a satire that is meant to offend none. It steers miraculously clear of vulgarity while negotiating a bumpy ride from Mumbai to Karachi.

Coffee With D is like an unfinished unpolished version of what could have been a rollicking  run-in into a ruminative session between Indian’s biggest fugitive and loudest journalist.If only it had been allowed more leg-space to lunge in the lap of the ludicrous.

As things stand Coffee With D with its beeped place names and other bloomers just remains a potentially funny satire.

Whenever ‘Arnab’ tries to steer the conversation in the prickly topic of communal strife, ‘Dawood’ snarls, “Don’t even go there.” A sure sign of how difficult it is for filmmakers in this country to address themselves to political issues. At  best the q and a between the Don and the Scribe remains a Koffee With Karan. After the rapidfire round Dawood even asks for his  gift hamper.

I could swear I saw ‘Dawood’ Zakir Hussein looking with leery longing at the leggy Deepannita Sharma.