Like the gimmick that one AK pulls on another in this interesting misfire script, the film too goes wrong from script to execution. This one helluva botched -up dark satire plays a mean-spirited Tom & Jerry game with audiences’ perceptions, giving Anil Kapoor, the star, the honour of being hounded and chased down by Anurag Kashyap…Yes. The very same noire director who decides to teach AK, the Self-styled superstar a lesson he is not likely to forget easily.
We won’t forget it either.
So what does Kashyap do? He kidnaps Anil Kapoor’s daughter and then shoots a real-time thriller where the star must find his daughter, Sonam Kapoor Ahuja before it’s “too late”. Too late for what? Who’s to say? Everyone connected with this monstrous misfire is busy being envelope-pushingly smart.
The mock-docu-drama shot like a real-time episode of a reality-show comes off far less clever than an episode of Bigg Boss. Out of the two actors (here’s a secret: one of them is actually a director who thinks he can act, but shhh), one of them is constantly on a wheezing hyperventilating hysteria trip. The other one wears the look of a smug cat who got all the milk.
We don’t know what the secret joke between the AKs is. They seem to think that the audience-habituated as it is to believing anything the stars tell them- would actually believe that Kashyap and Kapoor hate each other, so much so that they decided to shoot a film celebrating their hatred. Oh, come on!
What we see on-screen probably had the entire team doubling up with laughter. Toooo toooo woke, yaar. What we see is not just unamusing but highly annoying. The entire Kapoor family participates in the most voluble dumb-charade game on the planet. At one point Anil Kapoor’s brother Boney shows up. Blessedly he doesn’t try to act like Boney Kapoor playing Boney Kapoor. The rest of the cast seems to enjoy playing the mimic version of their own self. None more so than Anil’s son Harshvardhan who shows up for the most bizarre cameo I’ve ever seen any actor perform.
Harshvardhan raves and rants, he writhes on the floor. He does all he can to attract Anurag Kashyap’s attention. The not so impressive performance gets lost in a swamp of attention-grabbing sequences that jump at us from the self-aware cockiness of a director who has just discovered the pleasures of rawness.
The film wears the unpolished look of horror films featuring “real footage” of inexplicable phenomena. Parts of Anil Kapoor’s chase to track down his daughter (there’s even his son-in-law making anxious inquiries on the phone) across crowded lanes of Mumbai are filled with a rising tension that never quite reaches a crescendo in even one sequence.
You have exactly twenty seconds to decide whether you want to watch a wildly off-kilter film about a director staging a crime to get interesting footage on camera. Your time starts now.
Directed by Vikramaditya Motwane AK Vs AK gets 2 and a half stars
Image source: IMDb