Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Subhash Ghai's films would guarantee a huge opening. They would be quintessential masala potboilers, high on Indian values, where the heroine would be the pure virginal beauty and the hero would be a dutiful son or someone wronged by the society. The film would have some blockbuster songs, a bit action in the end and overall a family entertainer.
With time, cinema and the way we perceive cinema changed. Characters became more real, more emphasis was given on story that the actors. While cinema and the audience changed, Ghai stuck mostly to his formula. Some worked, some failed. And his latest 'Kaanchi' falls in the latter category; a film so bad that it makes you cringe inward and curse your luck throughout its 2 hour 30 minutes runtime.
In the beginning the story sets out to be revenge saga. Although the concept has been revamped and stylized by the Kashyaps and the Varmas in the recent times, it is still a plot worth exploring. Kaanchi, a 19 year old girl from a village called 'Koshampa' in Uttarakhand spends most of her time abusing, pouting and behaving like a juvenile. She is sort of in a relationship with childhood friend Binda, who runs a military academy( which looks more like an adventure camp) and is a social activist (because its cool to be one these days). Both the families are happy with their liason and are all set to get them married off with blessings. Enter twist, Sanjay Kakda, a rich brat and a painter who falls obsessively in love with Kaanchi and wants activist-lover boy out of the picture. Sanjay's father is a noted minister of the country (Mithun Chakraborty with cotton pads stuffed inside his mouth throughout the film) and uncle (Rishi Kapoor) is an industrialist who is keen on making the picturesque Koshampa village a tourist spot and a industrial town.
The obsessive lover, on being rejected by child-woman Kaanchi, decides to mow down Binda a day before the couple's wedding. Being the only witness to the crime, Kaanchi decides to run away from her village in Uttarakhand and find a job in Mumbai and eliminate the Kakda family itself. At the film's interval, in spite of glitches here and there, the story makes sense. But in the second half, when Kaanchi arrives in Mumbai to seek revenge, the film absolutely loses its plot and becomes a chaos. Ghai puts in a corrupt politician, some social activists fighting 'some' injustice on the streets of Mumbai and an ageing playboy industrialist who wants some action in the story which completely dilutes the actual plot making the film an arduous affair to watch.
The screenplay is so poor that it makes you cringe and laugh at the same time. The dialogues do not match what is depicted on the screen, the editing is too sketchy, and the acting is poor. We have seen in the past that when a story is poor, even good actors can't really save the film. And that's what happens with 'Kaanchi' as well. While Ghai has a formidable supporting cast- Mithun Chakraborty, Rishi Kapoor, Adil Hussain, Mita Vashisht- the film's story and shoddy direction gives them no scope at all to perform. Some of the scenes come out of the blue and perhaps even the director doesn't know why they are there. The songs, which in Ghai's films are usually good, aren't great either and in fact look forced in the storyline.
As for the lead pair, it remains a mystery that why an actor like Kartik Tiwary, who made such an impressive debut in 'Pyaar Ka Punchnama' would decide to do such abysmal role in the film. He grunts, behaves like a jungle Tarzan and can't even romance the heroine well. Subhash Ghai's new discovery Mishti is a disappointment from the word go. She grunts, pouts, screams and speaks childlike in most part of the film. When she is angry, she stomps and marches as if she is part of a parade and maintains more or less the same expression throughout the film. A story which has her as the central character, gives her enough scope to perform and outshine others, and yet Mishti falters at every step.
Avoid 'Kaanchi'. Stay at home in this heat, the film is just going to add more misery, trust me. *reaches for the bottle of aspirin*.
Ratings: 0.5/5
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