It’s Two Bad if You Watch ‘Cirkus’

Cirkus

Cast: Ranveer Singh, Pooja Hegde, Jacqueline Fernandez, Johnny Lever, Sanjay Mishra, Varun Sharma, Siddhartha Jadhav, Murali Sharma

Direction: Rohit Shetty

Rating: ★

Showing in theatres

Rohit Shetty probably felt warm and fuzzy when he took on Cirkus as director and co-producer. And to be honest, there are two-three minutes in the 138-minute-long film when I genuinely felt the glow of his good intentions, especially in scenes where he gathers several recognizable Bollywood character-actors we haven’t seen for three years. 

Shetty’s large-heartedness, his attempt to put on a show to which many forgotten actors were invited, did make me warm up to the film for those few minutes, but true to its name, Cirkus with a ‘k’ is a parade of disjointed, unconnected acts. 

We see acrobatic acts, comedy acts, blah acts, dance numbers, but no daredevilry except by the director who has yet again mounted an idiotic, hollow film that is also long and intensely boring.

Cirkus credits four people as writers despite the fact that the film’s plot is a copy of Gulzar’s 1982 film Angoor, which was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. 

Cirkus is set in Bangalore and Ooty, and is narrated to us by one Dr. Roy Jamnadas (Murali Sharma).

Dr Roy runs an orphanage in pre-Independence India. He seems to be a decent fellow till he decides to conduct his own secret experiment and prove to the world that parvarish is greater than DNA. 

As two sets of parents come to adopt two sets of identical twins who have been named A2 and B2, Dr Roy does some hera-pheri and creates two new baby hampers – AB1 and AB2. 

One set of Roy (Ranveer Singh) and Joy (Varun Sharma) go to Bangalore, to an industrialist’s house, and the other set of Roy and Joy go to Ooty with a man and his wife who run a circus.  

Shetty’s Cirkus draws the apna khoon vs paraya khoon idea from old Bollywood films where judwa bhai became bichhre bhai in the first reel and met and hugged in the last reel. 

In Bollywood of yore all the tragic separation at birth was done by an evil mama, chacha, chachi or dushman who was after money, property or revenge. In a few cases it was also the night-shift nurse who hankered for a child.

But in Cirkus, the adla-badli is done by a man to prove the point to the world that blood is thinner than parvarish. But this point is lost because both sets of Roys and Joys are good guys. And since nothing is ever thought through in the worlds that Shetty conjures up, the film proceeds to rubbish its own flimsy premise by giving the separated Roy twins an electric connection. 

Circus wala Roy feels no jhatka from electricity, and turns this superpower into a nightly circus act; every time he plays with bijli, electric current runs through the other Roy, making him judder, levitate and give electric shocks to all those around him.

The film has no interest in the two Joys, so they just hang around the Roys, like sweet nothings.  

One Roy is married to Mala (Pooja Hegde), and the other is dating Bindu (Jacqueline Fernandez). One couple sings and dances, the other fights over adopting a child. 

In between all this, Bindu’s daddy, Raibahadur (Sanjay Mishra) thinks that he has seen his daughter’s boyfriend with another woman and decides to investigate. 

The film proceeds in this idiotic fashion for a while, coursing through elaborate Disneyland sets in primary colors, till Bangalore-based Roy and Joy set out for Ooty to finalize a tea-estate deal. Since they are carrying money, they invite the undivided attention of a gang of supremely inept chors led by one Momo (Siddhartha Jadav). 

Cirkus draws its comic power from this gang of chors, especially Momo who has a beehive hairdo, except that it’s not standing on his head straight, but has been laid to rest in a way that it juts out like a furry awning providing shade to his face.  

Momo & Co are after Rs 5 lakh that Roy and Joy are carrying. Meanwhile, the other set of Roy and Joy are trying to get a heeron ka haar. One set of R&J goes to the house of the other R&J, and that pair goes to the hotel where Bindu’s daddy is skulking. In all this confusion, Momo keeps getting stunned by bijli ka current again and again, Mala tries to make out with the wrong Roy, and the doctor saab who created all this mess runs around doing nothing.

Big jeeps and SUVs don’t crash and go boom in Cirkus. And there are no dramatic, slo-mo kicks by the hero while he swivels round and round on one leg. But there’s a lot in Cirkus that is signature Rohit Shetty. 

There’s the stuff that’s always missing, including a proper story, a coherent plot based on some degree of common sense and logic, a decent line for the film’s two leading ladies.  

And then there are those peculiar things that maketh a Rohit Shetty film: Men with muscles driving open jeeps. Women worrying if their beau is cheating on them. A married woman wanting a child. A sexy, simpering babe dancing with her boyfriend. Some homophobic jokes. Asses kicked and set on fire. Crotches whipped and aghast with pain. One man who talks too much and gets slapped repeatedly. Et cetera.

While watching Cirkus I felt deep sympathy for Indian actors who put in their best effort even in the most harebrained films. 

In Cirkus, Ranveer Singh does two things. He acts like a vibrator at top speed, and when he is not vibrating, he must look confused and throw the occasional slap.

Cirkus is long, it drags, and its comedy irritates. The Deepika Padukone song is dull. The few moments when the film is not insufferable are when it plays old Bollywood songs, from “Dil Ka Bhanwar Kare Pukar” to “Aaa Jaane Jaan.” 

Despite all this I have to hand it to Rohit Shetty for his noble intentions. Cirkus is born out of his love for Bollywood, but it’s made insufferable by its stupidity.