Movie review: Sooper Se Ooper

Rating: *

Rajasthani chora trying to find a long-lost mama so that he can claim his rightful property: this one-line story may have seemed,on paper,as if it was just crying out to be a film. But on screen,it turns out be one big dud.

Vir Das plays the Mumbai fellow who goes off to a village in Rajasthan to search for his dead mother’s brother. Who turns out to be Gulshan Grover in a red langot (the stuff the pehelwaans wear in the akhara). Why langot? The story offers no clue.

Actually,Sooper Se Ooper is plot-less,which leads to the characters being clueless. Ranvir (Das) is given a gaon ki gori (Kulhari) to play with,when he is not having life-and-how-to-live-it conversations with his mama and his (the mama’s) faithful saathi (Sharma).

At one point,they all dance in the dunes. Why? No one knows. Some dodgy builders from Mumbai,led by Kukreja (Dobriyal,in a terrible wig),show up. They are after the property. After doing the Rajasthan thing in leheriya safas with the mandatory khamma ghanis thrown in,the good guys and the goons head off to Mumbai,and engage in more random things.

Das is likeable and has done well in films when he is one of a bunch. Alone,he gets flattened. Grover must have the part down pat,given that he played something similar recently in I Am Kalam: here,he is simply wasted. So is Dobriyal,who’s been having a sticky time of it,role-wise,these days.

I was the only one in the theatre in the morning show in my neighbourhood multiplex. Who is this film made for? Is anyone looking at the finished product and wondering who will see it?

A complete waste of two hours.