My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves

Director: E Niwas

Ordinary-looking guy, with a less-than-ordinary background, wants to be a big filmstar: nice idea, if not madly original, and E Niwas keeps threatening to give us a film which actually delivers as much as it promises. But My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves starts losing steam too soon, and reaches the stop-line after too many fits and starts.

E Niwas's quirky humour, so much on display in his under-rated, goofy Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega, is evident in the way he creates Anthony's (Nikhil Dwivedi) world: an orphan, picked up by a Muslim bhai (Pawan Malhotra), raised by a Catholic priest (Mithun Chakraborty), and befriended by all kinds of oddballs.

If the director had kept the tone consistent — a funny-and dark-comb — the film may have had more character. As things pan out, Anthony's forays into the underworld, full of cold-blooded villains, and filmon-ki-duniya, where real-life heroes give him lectures about Stanislavsky and method acting, co-exist uneasily. And except for a bravura act by Pawan Malhotra, who seems to be finally, and well-deservedly, among roles, and Anupam Kher's Farida Khanum-loving, fish-feeding mob boss, everything else is ordinary, and chalta-hai. Amrita Rao is pretty, but too perky. And newcomer Nikhil Dwivedi, who's being touted as the next big thing, is likeable, and in places, passable. That's about it.