Zero from Anand L Rai is in fact a very Anand L Rai film. It is almost like how Anand L Rai and his writer Himanshu Sharma would approach if the idea of Martian was given to them. But then that’s the problem. We need masala, songs and heartbreak in such heavy dosage that when the movie got made, it became an extremely scattered creation. Zero is watchable only because of the endearing performance by Shah Rukh Khan.
Bauua Singh is a vertically challenged person who has this arrogant tone. He is afraid of commitments. And his first love also got broken because of this commitment fear. How this attitude gets changed over a period of time with life experiences is what Zero ultimately trying to tell us. This is what I can come up as a summary as the clumsiness of the screenplay makes it difficult for me to summarize things without revealing much.
The scattered nature of the plot is the major problem in my view. Towards the climax there is a glimpse of Katrina Kaif in the movie and I was like “”Oh hi! I almost forgot you were there in the film”. The shifts of the plot points are so wacky that Anand L Rai almost insults our intelligence. In the second half the gears are getting shifted so quickly that the creative imagination excuse will no longer sound sensible. In a recent interview I heard people addressing Zero as a high concept film. Zero may have a plot element that is practically high concept. But the movie to be honest has less interest in that concept.
As I said, it is actually Anand L Rai’s lavish exploration of his usual movies. Breaking the marriage in the beginning and committing to the same person in the end is almost a self homage from Rai’s side. The problem is that the script needed more conviction. You may have Red Chillies VFX doing the hefty duty of creating the entire mission mars backdrop. But if the construction towards that is haywire, nothing would make sense to the viewers. The whole Babita Kumari episode looks convoluted. Babita Kumari was Himanshu Sharma’s tool to rectify Bauua and in my opinion that tool wasn’t used properly. The areas were the script scored was in the beginning portions where we got to see the real unapologetic Bauua Singh. The cinematography was okay. The visual effects needs to be appreciated for its work on creating Bauua Singh. The music and background score also deserves appreciation fro creating the feel that the screenplay couldn’t really generate.
Shah Rukh Khan in his Bauua Singh avatar is perhaps the only thing you will remember in Zero. The energy he imparts is impeccable and I absolutely enjoyed the
Zero is way too ambitious. They are trying to incorporate too many things into one plot. The grandeur of the concept sort of took away the heart from the movie giving us an endearing male lead in a lackluster movie.
Rating: 2/5
The grandeur of the concept sort of took away the heart from the movie giving us an endearing male lead in a lackluster movie.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
