Crew Review | Second-Half Turbulence Restricts This Fun Comedy From Being Hilarious

Director Rajesh Krishnan’s first film, Lootcase, was a crackling comedy that really made me laugh during those dark lockdown days. The latest Hindi film Crew, starring Tabu, Kareena Kapoor Khan, and Kriti Sanon in lead roles, is the latest directorial from him. While the movie is a comedy that starts off really smoothly establishing the leading ladies, somewhere it is struggling to have a solid conflict. Because of that, the remaining journey of Crew becomes slightly turbulent, making it funny but not hilarious.

So the movie is about these three women who are part of the cabin crew of Kohinoor Airlines. Geeta Sethi, the senior in the group, is the breadwinner of her family, and she has to support her brother as well. Jasmine has always wanted to live the life of the rich people, and she has been pitching the idea of her own business to many. The youngest in the group, Divya Rana, actually had aspirations to be a pilot but had to settle for an air hostess. They found themselves in the middle of a gold smuggling case at a time when their airline was on the verge of going bankrupt. How some of the decisions they took to survive tackle their life and how the three responded to those situations is what we see in Rajesh Krishnan’s Crew.

As I said, the character establishing that happens through flashbacks is really interesting and funny. You get all these quirky details about each character, and the dynamic between these free-spirited women is great fun to watch. But once the trio ends up in trouble, both the fun and innovativeness are taking a break from the writing. The conflict between the three feels feeble, and even the personal hurdles like the loss of dear ones and the inefficiency in paying off debts, do not have the desired impact. After that unimpactful phase, Rajesh somewhat gets control of the movie through humor that happens in the final act, which was generic in terms of writing, but the actors sort of elevated it.

Tabu, as Geetha Sethi, was having fun playing the character. The character was such that from being kinky to being extremely serious, the seniority mattered, and she aced the role with ease. Kareena Kapoor Khan, on the other hand, gets a role that is a less animated version of her iconic Poo. The vulnerable bits are quite minimal for these actors in this movie, and similar to Tabu, one can also see Kareena having a ball playing this flawed yet liberating character. Kriti Sanon, as the relatively naive and insecure one in the gang, was also quite good in her character, and the palpable chemistry of the trio actually enhanced a lot of moderate scenes into funnier ones. Rajesh Sharma as Mittal was memorable. Kapil Sharma and Diljith Singh Dosanjh are also there in the film in cameo-equivalent roles.

In terms of the setting, Rajesh Krishnan is not trying to complicate things. He wants to make sure the film is in that light-hearted comedy space, and even in an interrogation scene, one can see that the lighting is pretty flat. What works against the movie is the lack of drama in the writing. The eccentricity of the deed these did was a bit too whacky that when you pitch some of the middle-class problems against them to make the audience empathize with them, it just doesn’t get that sync. Thank God for that line in the Hotel lobby where Geetha says she won’t leave without drinking the whole coffee. The revenge agenda against Vijay W(M)alia made no emotional sense because we were seeing these three in great designer clothes in almost every scene with perfect hair and makeup. I am not a fan of remixes, but fortunately, there are no item numbers here, and every track is used smartly to cover portions that were written in the script.

With banter humor and counter dialogues, Rajesh Krishnan’s Crew never becomes a dull experience. But in the middle portions, the drama feels insufficient, and the familiar and over-the-top finale depends heavily on the performance of the leading ladies to land safely. The trailer of the movie very much gave me the feeling that Crew will also have a comical peak similar to Lootcase. But unfortunately, Rajesh couldn’t achieve that with his second film.