Fanney Khan, a remake of the Belgian-Dutch Oscar-nominated film Everybody’s Famous, doesn’t want to waste time. In a matter of minutes, the tightly-woven screenplay by debuting director Atul Manjrekar and co-writers Hussain and Abbas Dalal, grounds the characters in sharply written, emotionally engaging scenarios. Then the story wheezes, dragging itself into absurdity.
Everybody’s Famous is now a high priority on my must-watch list, just to see if its loose, parodic nature and lack of common sense is directly ported over in Fanney Khan.
Anil Kapoor is awe-inspiring as Prashant Kumar aka ‘Fanney’, a wannabe singer whose dreams of stardom shift perspective when he has a newborn baby Lata. Just seconds after seeing Lata for the first time, he wants her to be as big as Lata Mangeshkar.
Lata grows up into a chubby but talented teenager (Pihu Sand), who loathes her dad but harbours his dreams of success. Like the majority of Indians who are brainwashed by the unattainable glamour of the entertainment industry, she too wants to be a star.
Lata, though, is motivated by peer pressure to be slim and beautiful. Instead of honing her talents and sympathising with her family’s hand-to-mouth status, she acts like a spoiled brat. Her mother (the always fantastic Divya Dutta) is worried about her daughter’s willingness to do whatever it takes to make her dream come true.
Fanney and his best buddy Adhir (Rajkumar Rao, engaging as always) end up kidnapping a superstar singer Baby Singh (Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan) — a diva who is sick and tired of the limelight. The plot then turns ludicrous, butchering whatever assurance of levelheadedness it had built in its first hour.
By the climax, one doesn’t know if they should blame Everybody’s Famous which came out in 2000 or Fanney Khan for the slip-ups. Even if Manjrekar and co-writers were adapting a film 18 years later, it doesn’t give them the excuse to not create a more sensible narrative.
Kapoor, Dutta, Rai and Rao are fine, and even if the story is riddled with ridiculousness, the movie is, at least, engaging and moving at times.
Published in Dawn, ICON, August 12th, 2018