Ganapath Review | This Green Screen Garbage Is a Multi-Level Endurance Test

Sitting through Ganapath, the new Tiger Shroff movie, is pretty difficult because they have taken the audience for granted in a very arrogant way. I actually found myself in a very baffled situation as the names and claims of the movie had no connection with what I saw on screen. Firstly, this is directed by Vikas Bahl, the man who made Queen and Super 30. Then, as per Wikipedia, the budget of this movie was 200 crores, and the visual effects in the film were just terrible, with not even a single visual having quality. With Tiger Shroff doing his usual acrobatics and dance every five minutes of the movie, Ganapath feels more like a two-hour-long version of one of those tacky T Series music videos.

In a dystopian future, humanity is going through a rough phase. The rich live in a posh city, and that world is controlled by Dalini. The poor live outside this city in deserted areas without resources. In the movie Ganapath, we see the story of our hero Guddu, who was living with the rich, but situations forced him to live with the poor and understand their problems.

Some movies are so bad in terms of writing that I really wish to know how those discussions between the director and the producers eventually came to the conclusion that this movie will entertain an audience. On paper, as a one-liner, this is like Mad Max meets Elysium with a pinch of Matrix. You have a draught-hit-like outer world. There is this super futuristic world of the elite, and the movie is about the chosen one who saves the poor and challenges the rich. But almost from the word go, where they show us a poorly rendered aerial visual of an abandoned world, you can sense the lack of depth in the narrative. And to make it worse, they are adding songs and silly romance with no great purpose.

When the movie reached its interval point, I thought Vikas Bahl was confused about whether he should make a fantasy film or a typical Tiger Shroff. Because what we see on screen is a high-concept film, but what if it was written by Farhad Samji or Milap Zaveri. The template here is a very familiar one, and hence, I was looking for a more creative interpretation of that template. But the movie sort of runs away from the central theme by reducing it to a green-screen MMA fight, the only thing its hero can pull off successfully. The CGI is as bad as Adipurush, and the only thing that makes it slightly better is the fact that some portions of the movie are shot in real locations. In the second half, there is this scene where Kriti Sanon’s character is getting arrested, and one can clearly see the green mat behind her.

Be it dystopian or utopian, Tiger Shroff only has one mode, and that is showing off his acrobatic skills and well-chiseled body. The funny thing is he is shown as this well-built young man from the very first scene, and Vikas Bahl wants us to believe that Guddu needs training. Tiger trying to act like a don’t care man-child in that Tapori style is unbearable. As the female spearhead of the rebellion, Kriti Sanon is in shape, and she perhaps has made an effort to think from the head of such a character. Malayalam actor Rahman gets an important role in the movie as the mentor, Shiva. Jameel Khan and Girish Kulkarni are wasted in pointless clown-like characters. Palestinian actor Ziad Bakri is there in the movie as John, the Englishman (Ya, that’s the character’s name). Legendary Mr. Amitabh Bachchan has gracefully allowed the makers to use his name to recover some cost. What you see of him in the trailer is very much what you see in the movie.

In Ganapath, the hero asks the poor people to bet on him in an MMA-like competition, which has a betting setup entirely controlled by rich people. At the end of the match, he declares with all the swagger that he did all that deliberately to help the poor. I was like, dude, you really think Dalini is going to give the money to the poor after that show of yours? At the end of the movie, they announced that Part 2 would be there, where we will see the face-off between Ganapath and Dalini. If that movie ever gets made with similar writing and visual effects quality, or if they even make an announcement poster, I wouldn’t be surprised if that gets followed by income tax raids.