The best comedies are the ones that manage to pull the audience along with it, based on comic situations created out of real-life instances with which the audience can identify. That’s why my favourite comic sitcoms are ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Modern Family.’ However, while the setting in ‘Nautanki Saala’ is improbable and the coincidences contrived, the film somehow creates a sparkle, thanks to the believable performances of the actors.
The movie gets off to a slow start. Ram Parmar, who insists on being called RP (Ayushman Khurrana), is seen at a shrink’s office and claims that he hasn’t eaten or slept in 3 months. She asks, rather knowingly, “Ladki ka naam kya hai?” and tells him that she’s been through the mush too. RP retorts with a Chinese proverb, and that’s how the laughs begin.
No doubt, the film - a remake of the French movie ‘Apres Vous’ - has been cleverly bollywood-ised. RP plays the character of Raavan in a play called Raavanleela, directed by him and seemed to be designed along the lines of Zangoora. When he’s heading home to celebrate his girlfriend’s birthday after the 1,500th show of the play, he meets Mandar Lele (Kunaal Roy Kapur) and his life changes forever.
Mandar’s deadpan expression and chronic pessimism are a perfect foil to RP’s vigour and solicitousness. As RP’s girlfriend Chitra (Gaelyn Mendonca) angrily points out, Mandar’s neediness is narcissism, and RP is a pathological do-gooder.
While some of the humour in the film is slapstick, we manage to overlook that thanks to the histrionic skills of the actors. In one scene, Mandar stares into the camera with his nose dripping - yeah, you don’t want to be caught eating while watching that. There’s grosser humour than what is called for, but what do you expect when Kunaal Roy Kapur is the comic relief? Anyway, there are a couple of lines that are effective only because they’re delivered entirely without irony - such as ‘Stop playing God, Ram’ - and the same goes for in-jokes, such as ‘Ayushman Bhava,’ uttered by Ayushman Khurrana.
The play’s exaggerated use of Sanskritised Hindi is offset by the thick Bihari accent of the producer and the broken Hindi of a Malayali nurse, who prays before the photograph of actor Mohanlal at her station.
The film excels in comic timing, and the dialogues and screenplay perfectly enhance this effect. Especially hilarious is RP’s meeting with Mandar’s grandmother.
The verdict: Like most rom-coms, ‘Nautanki Saala’ demands some willing suspension of disbelief, but it pays off in the end.