When Rohit Shetty joins hands with someone like Ranveer Singh, and Shetty offers him a double role with one of the characters having the nickname “electric man,” the movie is expected to be that deafening mass masala comedy formula. But surprisingly enough, the combination that was supposed to deliver a celebration ends up becoming a routine comedy from Rohit Shetty that just overdid everything that Mr. Shetty has done in his entire filmography. With the character actors doing the heavy lifting, Cirkus, the year-end masala from Rohit Shetty and Ranveer Singh, is an instantly forgettable wannabe comedy.
Okay. So the story is loosely based on Shakespeare’s comedy of errors. We have 2 sets of twins who got separated at birth as a doctor wanted to do some social experiment. Both the twins were named Roy and Joy. While one set was in Bangalore with a wealthy family, the other lived in Ooty, belonging to a circus family. The confusion that happens in their life when these four are in the same town over a night’s time is what we witness in Cirkus.
Bright colors, broad-stroke writing, slapstick humor, etc., are expected to be seen in a Rohit Shetty entertainer. And Shetty’s filmography is a mix of movies that either get it reasonably right or go horribly wrong. Cirkus is a movie that just couldn’t crack; weirdly enough, it becomes a tiresome Rohit Shetty movie that is struggling to maintain that high energy despite having two Ranveer Singhs, One Johnny Lever, and an ounce of Deepika Padukone. Usually, in Rohit Shetty films, even when the story looks silly, the skit jokes somewhere have that stand-alone quality where you might find it as an entertaining bit as a YouTube clip. Here even scenes look far too stretched out for the sake of being funny.
I am not saying Ranveer Singh has delivered a half-hearted performance in Cirkus. For a guy whose default mode is FDFS at Gaiety Galaxy, it was shocking to see him struggle to hold the audience’s attention. After a point, it was junior Johnny Lever, Siddhartha Jadhav, who was shouldering the poorly written comedy sequences in the film. Varun Sharma couldn’t really make the most of the opportunity he got with this film. Pooja Hegde as Mala was okay. Jacqueline Fernandez, as expected, is there to be eye candy in songs. Sanjay Mishra, Mukesh Tiwari, and several other faces we have seen in Rohit Shetty’s movies are there in the never-ending star cast of Cirkus.
With Cirkus, I feel Rohit Shetty has taken the audience way too lightly. The visual effects quality is so bad that even Pogo TV’s animated backgrounds had more life in them. He is trying to be all preachy and is talking about how inconsequential blood relations are in front of real bonding. But everything is narrated in a setup that looks more like a skit. Certain stylized sequences in the movie have that visual beauty. But a major chunk of the film is saturated with colors, and I wonder whether Rohit Shetty calls the DI guy Holi Wala Bhaiyya.
Just to give you an idea, the “current Laga” song does not happen during the end credits. In that song, you see a restaurant in Ooty in Rohit Shetty’s world. The lack of interest they show in representing South India correctly in that song can be seen in the entire making process of Cirkus. Cirkus is a big-budget version of the Kapil Sharma show with too many performers and minimal screen time for each.
Cirkus is a big-budget version of the Kapil Sharma show with too many performers and minimal screen time for each.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
