Munna Michael Movie Review: It Is An Insult To Michael Jackson!

By Devyani Nandy

Movie: Munna Michael

Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui,  Tiger Shroff, Nidhi Aggerwal

Directed by: Sabbir Khan

Rating: *(1 star)

Some things never change. Sabbir Khan for instance. The epitome  of awful  filmmaking , the armpit of artistry, Sabbir is to Hindi cinema what Lalu Yadav is to Indian politics.

Corruption of any kind is funny only when you can look at life from both sides, the tolerable and the unbearable with equal dispassion. Then you grit your teeth and say, ‘I will bear with Munna Michael this week because God blessed us with Dunkirk.’

Try. Just try it. And then you may, just may, find this corny trashy apathetic putrid film bearable. Sabbir’s writer has a great idea. Tiger plays a Michael Jackson fan. Who more qualified to dance till he drops dead? Sadly it’s the audience who are likely to drop dead watching the dreadful dramedy about a dancer and a goon.

Nawazuddin , in what must rank as his most crowdpleasing role to date plays a gangster who  hires Tiger to teach him to dance,  so he can impress the girl he loves.

The first-half has some ribtickling scenes of Nawazuddin trying to copy Tiger’s unbelievable moves . Nawaz is not half as bad a dancer as he would like to believe. He is certainly a better dancer than Tiger is an actor.

So there they are, the alleged non-dancer and the certifiable non-actor and the girl Dolly who comes between them. Dolly,you may be keen to know,  is played by newcomer Nidhi Garewal who  looks like a distant cousin of Alia Bhatt and acts and dances with the confidence of  a small-towner who thinks all of Mumbai and Delhi are watching her.

The antics of Tiger, Nawaz and the freshly recruited Ms Garewal may amuse you for while when they play a silly game of musical chairs with their hearts beating and pounding to the rhythm of songs that seem to be composed with the express purpose of splitting eardrums.In fact so  loud is the background music that I was sure  it was meant to be a distraction from the dementia that dominates most of the narrative.

Nothing can rescue you from the surplus of absurdity that dominates the tragic humour of  a joke that’s lost in translation. Towards the second-half fresh-faced debutante Nidhi prepares for a dance-reality show where the judges are Farah Khan and Chitrangda Singh. They try to look stunned by her performance stage. We can’t even try to be entertained by the plot of what can  at best be described as Remod’Souza ABCD where the alphabet is forgotten.

Nawazuddin tries hard to be  a tapori with two left feet.And I never thought I’d live to see the day when Ronit Roy would ham his way through a film. As for Tiger Shroff ,he proves Kangana Ranaut right. Nepotism sucks.

Tribute to MJ?  Ha  ha ha.