Shortkut - The Con Is On

I will never forgive my mother for making me see this.

The script is stupid. There are glaring loopholes in it. Well, I don't really mind there being loopholes in the film if they director can deflect our attention from it but this movie fails entirely in that.

The ending is ridiculous and makes no sense at all. The filmmakers tried to make a satire-comedy with a message that shortcuts don't work, but failed on all three counts.

The comedy can be best described as a totally unfunny concoction of intentional stupidity, un-subtle and in-your-face, wanna-be witty one- liners that are not witty at all with ridiculous exaggeration.

The satire is too exaggerated to carry any real weight.

Such is the script that performances lose all weight. Akshay Khanna's serious role is weak and made more so by the silly feel the movie has. Arshad Warsi to be fair does what the script tells him too, which might excuse his performance but not the fact that he agreed to do this movie in the first place.

Must-not-watch

Anil Kapoor Production comes up with a poorly executed, so called comedy, which doesn't even a single comic sequence to talk about. In fact it simply should not be called a comedy at all, since the main plot with the actual fun element unbelievably comes after 2 long hours in the film. And before that you are enforced to see all the boring, predictable and badly written scenes which completely fail to generate any kind of interest in the viewers.

The first half talks about friends betraying each other and a stolen script which makes the career of Arshad Warsi and ruins the future of Akshay Khanna. Along with this, the love angle has Amrita Rao playing a well known actress and Chunky Pandey playing the acting guru, managing Arshad Warsi's filmi career. In spite of having a bollywood based concept, the movie doesn't excite you at all and even makes you feel uneasy watching the dull and unentertaining portrayal of the movie world. Moreover it is also quite weird to see Amrita Rao dancing with veterans, Anil Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt in a routine item song. Amrita just looks like a tiny young girl caught between two huge grown up giants on the dancing floor.

Director Neeraj Vora, who is known for some worth mentioning associations in his career, delivers a very childish kind of product having nothing to offer in the name of comedy. Aneez Bazmee, the writer, seems to have written the project in his extra time without any special efforts put in for entertainment. And due to this lack of spirit in the project, all the actors fail to deliver any noticeable performance in the movie, acting simply as their routine job.

Arshad Warsi, tends to go overboard this time and is not able to entertain. Akshay Khanna is again loud as seen in some of his earlier performances. Chunky Pandey opts for more hamming in his scenes and that too without any comedy. Amrita Rao, finally decides to shed a few clothes and agrees to become the glamour element in the movie (though she signs only few good projects..?). The rest of the cast is just there as needed with only one sweet performance by Tiku Talsania, who plays the soft hearted movie producer helping Akshay. Cinematography and Music department has got nothing new to offer other than the usual stuff. Hence, a good catchy song needed to push a big project now a days, was surely missing.

Story wise, the plot did have the required punch for a comedy, but it was not incorporated properly as expected from the director Neeraj Vora. The movie keeps on swinging between various genres as a pendulum. And in the first half it more looks like an emotional drama than a comedy. Actually, the main comic part of the movie starts just before the climax when Akshay decides to complete his movie in an unusual style. But till then it becomes too late to cover up the mess.

However, may be this main comedy plot in the story, was pushed deliberately towards the end, since it is highly inspired from the movie "Bowfinger" released in 1999. Even the tag line "The Con is on" is also borrowed as it is from the English Comedy featuring Steve Martin & Eddie Murphy.

With "Global Awareness" regarding Indian Movies, growing stronger than ever before, the producers may have decided to use less of the inspired plot, adding more new angles into the storyline. In any case, the main point is that the most entertaining part of the story, which could have resulted in a good comedy, has been strangely used only towards the climax. And due to that, the movie cannot be tagged merely as a Bollywood Comedy from any angle.

Officially "Shortkut" is said to be the remake of a Malayalam movie "Udayananu Tharam". But that too was released in 2005, much later than "Bowfinger" which came in 1999. So here's another movie from a big production house with a stamp of "Inspired One". If asked for a recommendation, I would simply request to opt something else for an entertaining weekend this time.

Neeraj Vohra after the pathetic PHP comes back with another crap comedy The film is pathetic and doesn't make you laugh mostly barring some few lines which look better in the promo

The film does have a plot but it's handled so badly it makes you cringe Akshaye Khanna needs to get off such messy films and Arshad too needs to try something else Direction is poor Music is bad

Amongst actors Akshaye Khanna is loud at times and good at times, another pathetic role with a bad wig Arshad Warsi overacts badly Amrita Rao tries hard to pass off as a hot babe and fails the rest are nothing great

Yet another movie to go absolutely impact less at the box office this week. Directed by Neeraj Vora, Shorkut is boring and is as predictable as it can get. No wonders were really expected from Neeraj Vora having seen his previous stint as a director. Shorkut disappoints you even more because the promos looked a lot good if not really impressive. Having actors with a such impeccable comic timing, the director fails to capitalize and relies on the writing skills of Anees Bazmee to do the job rather than the actors. Shorkut portrays itself to be a movie filled with humor, which sadly isn't. The scenes that are close to funny are already unveiled in the promos and there's no real surprise element in the complete package.

Shorkut - The Con is On's two male protagonists, Shekhar(Akshay Khanna) and Raju(Arshad Warsi) an struggling asst director and a wanna-be actor respectively each of whom believe in different values to make it big. Shekhar, a hardworking-determined-conventional lad who believes in efforts rather than luck to find himself achieve things that he dreams of, which is writing and directing a movie someday. Raju on the other hand is careless-unrealistic- easy-way-out-kinda lad who believes in shortcuts to becoming an actor rather than skills and hard work. Shekhar is seen desperately working on scripts to realize his directorial dreams, so as to confess the secret love with already established actress Mansi(Amrita Rao) to the world. Shekhar's dreams are then shattered when Raju steals his script to trigger a acting career out of the stolen script. The race to career glory of both Shekhar and Raju is for you to watch it yourself.

Shorkut fails to engage you even for a petty continuous stretch of ten minutes forget the complete running time of the movie. The transition of the movie from the humor zone to the serious-emotions zone is something that is hard to digest provided scenes involving Arshad Warsi. The actors are seen on characters that so poorly written that actually makes you wonder did Arshad Warsi actually play a Cirkit. Shorkut, a movie that could have helped Arshad Warsi and Amrita Rao to revitalize their wavered career is indeed not going to. Akshaye Khanna looks decent as always and looks to contribute filling in the patches. Chunkey Pandey is seen on a role that looks dumb and definitely not funny.

The music bu Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is average except for "Patli Gali", which seems to received really well among the audience.

I will go with 4 out of 10 for Neeraj Vora's Shortkut - The Con is On. Please avoid this flick!

If anyone can get this across to Anil Kapoor, i want to know what was Anees Bazmee doing as a writer of this movie?

(Orginally posted at "Your Movie Critic" - www.raghavthecritic.blogspot.com)

Another flop copy of a very good Malyalam movie. Director Priyadarshan started this trend. The reason he succeeds most of the time because he is also the Director for the Malyalam movie. So he knows the emotions for each scene so keeping the Bollywood audience in mind he makes some changes but cuts it pretty close to the original movie. Mr. Neeraj Vora has gained success in the past with Hera Pheri, Bhool Bulaiya etc., all Malyalam movies but there was no evidence of that quality here. Firstly the characters were absolutely wrong. Besides Munnabhai, Arshad Warsi hasn't been able to make any in roads in any other movie. Secondly Akshay Khanna is an actor with limited acting skills. The character in this film required a higher level if not superior skills. Mr. Mohanlal the superstar of Malyalam movie and Srinivasan were superb together. Both the movies were also inspired by the king of comedy Eddie Murphy's "Bowfinger". The dialog writer must take equal blame for this debacle. The dialogs lacked creativity and were bland at best. The characters just sleep walked through all the scenes like zombies. Arshad Warsi tried his best to lift the movie through his now stale comedic style but that just didn't cut the cheese. Songs was nothing much to write home about. My advise, save your money buy yourself a good lunch instead.