sandy

Director: Kunal Vijaykar
Starring: Cyrus Broacha, Boman Irani, Dia Mirza and Mahesh Manjrekar, Rajat Kapoor
Stars: 1/2

Director Kunal Vijaykar is best known for his gig on MTV where he used to join funny man Cyrus Broacha in some of the comic acts — all mostly silly stuff.

The thing is even if one is willing to put up with any amount of nonsense on television (with the comfort of the remote) one can’t be as forgiving when it’s turned into a film and you have to pay too! If you’re curious about how the film’s title came about, it seems Vijaykar was dining with Boman Irani and both noticed a Fruit & Nut chocolate on the table. Almost instantly they decided to name their film on their favourite chocolate even though it had no connection with the subject.

It’s with this level of levity and a total disregard for the audiences’ expectations that the film has been made. It’s one thing to be wacky — we’ve had lots of those films. There was Loins Of Punjab Presents or more recently Quickgun Murugan, which sparkled with genuine humour and quirkiness.

Fruit & Nut, on the other hand, is on its own trip. One wishes one could qualify its humour as clever or madcap, but you can’t!

Jolly Marker (Cyrus) is loser in the film, where everything he does goes wrong. He is awfully messy, foolish and accident prone, and most people feel nothing but disdain for him.

These scenes aren’t exactly funny, but they at least bring a smile to your face. Like the scene where Cyrus sits on his boss’ (Mahesh Manjrekar’s) fractured leg or where he gets rudely snubbed by his neighbours. But his goofiness is so acutely dangerous (his urine on a wire causes explosion), it’s impossible to sympathise with the character. The other two characters in the plot are Monica Gokhale (Dia Mirza — pretty as a picture in a sari), an architect at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). She is kidnapped by Maharaja Harry Holekar (Boman Irani) who believes his forefathers owned the city and the mushrooming of multiplexes and other buildings have buried his palace.

Obviously, there is a certain social parody beneath all the insanity that takes place in the film. But all the intended satire is lost amidst humour that is puerile and tasteless.

In an attempt to appear funny, Mahesh Manjrekar’s character keeps referencing all kinds of people and film titles, but very little of it is intelligible. The other jokes are equally lame. The only one I got was where a man screams, “Monica ke kaan patti pe gun rakh ke woh leke gaya, and Cyrus asks, “Lekin Ganpatti ko toh abhi time hai na” – that’s the level of ‘humour’ here.

Also Boman — a terrific actor otherwise — can’t do anything to salvage the film this time.
The film could have been a worthwhile effort, a dark comedy of sorts, but sadly, it takes the audience too much for granted and revels in its own stupidt