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Thursday, March 27, 2025
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BOLLYWOOD FATSO
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating:***
Some fine actors, who know how to look at home even when placed in outlandish
circumstances, carry this quaint tale of love, death, separation, resurrection
and reparation to the level of a fairly engaging comedy.
Films about near-death and after-life have a tendency to be flippant in tone
while showing a world beyond the one that we know. It`s the same fear of the
unknown that makes us laugh loudly when we are in a pitch-dark room looking for
an exit.
This romcom makes its way out of the comfort zone of a love triangle (actually,
quadrangle, and then one more angle added somewhere down the line), gets sassy
about laughing all the way to after-life and then comes down to earth with a
soft thud.
There are no sharp curves or twists in the plot. Even when Purab Kohli goes to a
place close to heaven, his dialogues with his hosts up there (Brijendra Kala and
gang) resemble a high-school debate on how to fill up the admission form rather
than an existential discourse.
Fatso is at best a sweet harmless comedy about Purab Kohli`s
character almost dying and returning to earth to assume his obese friend Ranvir
Shorey`s body. Yup, that`s it.
The main challenge in the narration is to convince the grieving girlfriend (Gul
Panag, sweet and restrained) that Purab is not who he looks like though he now
looks like Ranvir Shorey, 40 kilos fatter than usual. The complications are kept
at a bare minimum. The love quadrangle is played out at a manageable octave,
which you know, will ensure a comfortable ending for all.
One can see that the narration comes to a dead-end, no pun intended. Left with
no precise way to conclude the love triangle, the film simply asks Ranvir to
take over. He delivers a discernibly improvised I-love-life monologue which ends
with a cute kiss with Gul. That`s how you shut all protest up when life
threatens to get complicated.
You simply shoo away all the misgivings and the dark patches that present
themselves in the course of life and cinema. And you simply celebrate the magic
of the here-and-now.
That`s what Fatso does with the least amount of fuss. It is not a
film that pushes far enough in any direction, dark or light. But manages to make
sufficient space in its range of vision to ensure that the characters don`t
appear contrived .
There are no laugh-out-loud or sob-out-hard moments in the film. The tragedy of
the girl losing her lover on the eve of their marriage is drowned in a pool of
mock, surreal situations created more from a sense of mischief than profundity.
But the film is fun to watch. It makes the right moves and noises. No one speaks
out of turn. And you don`t come away from the film offended in any detail.
Technically, the presentation and packaging are reasonably neat. The film is
shot in apartments rather than on sets. That helps to make you believe these are
real people. Not actors who have just mugged their lines on the sets.
Fatso is a natural, sweet, tangy and tender rom-com about a
near-dead lover and a pretender. A just-right ensemble cast makes the
proceedings look larger than laugh.
Don`t go looking for It`s A Wonderful Life and you may come away
quite happy with this film.
They say that matches are made in heaven. This is one of those films where they are undone in heaven! But then again, that’s the strange thing about love: just when the worst has happened, the best happens almost like the nightmare never took place, almost like love is undeniable, almost like love and hope are two faces of the same coin.
Nandini fell in love once and then life happened–shattering every belief that she had about love. And then, just as she was ready to give up on love, she fell in love, all over again! Hysterical, intelligent, honest, Fatso is all about love packaged in with a calorie count!
Screening Of Film Fatso Photo Gallery