Firangi

By Onkar Singh

Kapil Sharma’s Firangi hits cinema halls today. Kapil has left nothing to chanced to ensure that his audiences visit cinema halls enjoy watching the movie. Besides visting television channels including the shows of famous programmes to permote his film. He has also visited FM channels to reach out those who cannot afford television sets.

Talking to Dibang of ABP news channel Kapil Sharma talked about how he was rejected by various organizations.”I am still a Kejriwal fan as his intentions are pure but PM Modi is my choice for a politician”. Narrating his struggle, he says, “I was rejected by ‘Laughter Challenge’ at first but then got selected. After that I always planned to start my own show as until then I worked on formats made by others”.

RJ Sucharita caught up with ace stand-up comedian turned actor-producer Kapil Sharma, as the revered host came by to Radio City Studios to promote his upcoming film, ‘Firangi’.

Firangi is directed by Rajiv Dhingra, who has a couple of Punjabi films behind him. This is his first foray into Hindi-language cinema. Of course, language is no barrier for him. The raw material is. And so is the treatment. He just doesn’t seem to be able to decide if his film is an out-and-out comedy, a satirical take on the impact of the Raj on common Indians, or a romance that blooms across an intractable ideological divide. Firangi is a 160-minute film that also throws in, for good measure, the swadeshi agitation and a surprise appearance by Mahatma Gandhi amid BMKJ slogans. That is far too much weight for one film to carry.

In the end – Firangi takes painfully long to get to that point, by which time the audience that has survived the rigmarole thus far is beyond caring – is a terribly tepid affair. Neither the comic potential at the core of the film nor the energy of Kapil Sharma’s antics is enough to pull it out of the irremediable mess it degenerates into. Firangi might have been harmless fun if only it had stopped short of running so hopelessly amok.