Guddu Rangeela isn’t the kind of film one goes to watch without expectations. The director Subhash Kapoor gave us two very interesting films — Phas Gaye Re Obama and Jolly LLB. Guddu Rangeela starts off promisingly with Rangeela (Arshad Warsi) singing ‘Kal Raat Mata Ka Mujhe Email Aaya Hai’ at a ‘Visa Celebration Night’. Rangeela and his cousin Guddu (Amit Sadh) are singers, doubling as petty thieves who identify potential victims for bigger criminals to rob. They also wear jackets with ‘Being Hanuman’ and ‘After Whisky I’m Risky’ emblazoned on them.
One would expect all this quirkiness to extend to the storyline, but it is, surprisingly, just another revenge saga disguised as something more.
The director has returned to the idea of a kidnap gone awry — a topic he handled hilariously in Phas Gaya Re Obama. So when Guddu and Rangeela are arm-twisted into kidnapping Baby (Aditi Rao Hydari) by ‘underworld PR’ Bangali (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), one expects a laugh riot. Call it bad timing, but this film comes when we’ve been seeing too many movies set amid Harayana’s khap panchayat and its lawlessness, like last week’s Miss Tanakpur Haazir Ho. Considering Ishqiya is still fresh in memory, one would be tempted to draw parallels between the two. Even Ronit Roy plays a menacing character we’ve seen far too many times.
But it is the actors who make Guddu Rangeela watchable. Amit Sadh is great in the scene where he narrates a tale about a village creating a fake cow to lure a tiger. Also, Rajeev Gupta as dim-witted constable Gulab Singh steals the show; his interactions with a senior cop are the film’s best moments.
The director is often compared to Rajkumar Hirani in his comic treatment of heavy-duty social subjects, but in his attempt to infuse seriousness into comedy, he’s ended up making a film with an identity crisis.
