Cast: Boman Irani, Dia Mirza, Cyrus Broacha, Mahesh Manjrekar, Rajit Kapoor

Director: Kunal Vijaykar

Rating:**

By rights, ‘Fruit and Nut’ should have been Comedy Central. After all, Boman can be a complete fruitcake, and a bigger nut than Cyrus is hard to find. If these two are placed in a mixer and swirled around by Kunal, who’s no slouch himself at making us laugh, we should have be rolling around the aisles, right? Sadly, very sadly, we don’t.

Ex-maharaja Harry Holkar (Boman Irani playing flagrantly insane in an atrociously fake wig) wants his old beloved Mumbai back. Corrupt builder Khandhar (Mahesh Manjrekar with a penchant for long, patently wrong Hinglish phrases) has his own agenda, which involves a mad scientist (Rajit Kapoor surrounded by red and blue test-tubes) and third-rate bombs. Bumbling loser Jolly Maker (Cyrus Broacha with an earnest air and nerdy glasses) and the love of his life Monu (Dia Mirza in her newly-minted swish wardrobe) get set to foil the evil plans of those who wish to destroy the city, falling into all kinds of scrapes.

It’s not as if there isn’t a lot going on-- Irani shaking a leg with a half-clad chorus line, Mirza switching from a demure sari to leather jackets and killer stilettos, Kapoor and Manjrekar stripping down to their underpants, and Broacha un-crossing his legs and wetting himself. But this thing doesn’t come together.

‘Fruit and Nut’ works in jerky stutters. It’s one thing to do a half-hour episode on network TV: it’s quite another to do a two hour film, coasting on one-liners and gags and in-house Bollywood jokes. The first time you see Builder and Scientist with blackened faces, itself one of the oldest slapstick shticks, you may feel like smiling. The second time, you don’t.

... contd.