May 24 – There are many things that debutant Tiger Shroff can do with ease. Back flips, aerial kicks, hip hop dancing. But acting is not one of them. Shroff is 24. To gender reverse Britney Spears’s lyrics, he is not a boy not yet a man. It doesn’t help that when he smiles, viewers instantly forget his machismo.
It’s a sweet smile which doesn’t make you blush, but confused if it’s coming in happiness or pain. And unfortunately Tiger smiles too often in Heropanti, often for no reason.
Heropanti would have hit the ball out of the park if it released in the 1980s. The setting is Haryana and Chaudhary Sahib (Prakash Raj, Bollywood’s preferred villain) is a no-nonsense patriarch of a Jat family of goons.
He has two daughters: Renu and Dimpy. The former runs off with her boyfriend, Rakesh, on the day of her wedding. Papa is not pleased and kidnaps all of Rakesh’s friends including Babloo (Tiger Shroff) to get details of their whereabouts.
But Babloo is a loyal friend, a stylish fighter and also a fearless Romeo. He refuses to escape as has fallen hard for Dimpy (Kriti Sanon), an aspiring Miss Haryana. It takes the entire of first half for Babloo to know that she is Chaudhary’s daughter and for her to realise that he fancies her.
Raised in a conservative household where women have no liberties and men dictate the terms, Dimpy has a lot of sartorial freedom. She walks about in tiny blouses, ghagras perched dangerously low and transparent dupattas.
Meanwhile, there is no shortage of evil men who Babloo can beat up using his martial art training. To no one’s surprise, Dimpy after reluctance finally warms up to Babloo because he safeguards her honour and also advises her to rebel and enjoy life a little.
The romantic bits come and go, many in the form of superfluous, poorly conceived songs. Instead the most relevant scenes are those which feature Chaudhary and Babloo. In one, an inebriated Chaudhary talks about a father’s frustrations and fears about his runaway daughter; in the other he doesn’t let go of Babloo, knowing that he is there to take Dimpy away.
It’s refreshing to see the girl’s father and her lover engage in an emotional tug of war. Sunil Grover’s fun cameo as the brazen groom with a runaway bride is well-timed and brings a much-needed lighter tone to the events.
While Heropanti does offer an ingenious take to the stereotypical Hindi film concept of let’s take the girl away from the wedding altar at the nth hour, it becomes unnecessarily hilarious because of awful and ill-timed dialogues.
Such as when Chaudhary asks a bare-chested Babloo what does Dimpy see in him that he can’t see. The background score, which derives from Western films and opera and often sounds like Jai Ho, is exaggerated.
There are enough action sequences to enable Shroff to establish himself as a convincing young action hero, of which Bollywood doesn’t have many. It’s not just about the physique but the confidence and comfort with which he performs the stunts.
But director Sabbir Khan, so taken in by his hero’s acrobatics, is also guilty of overemphasizing on Shroff’s skills as he has him flipping every 15 minutes in the film. Kriti passes the test of a vulnerable pretty young thing but doesn’t have much to showcase here other than skin. Ultimately, Heropanti becomes all about Shroff’s athletic ability and has little to do with his acting ones.
-INDIA TODAY
