MUMBAI: The trailer of "The Accidental Prime Minister" begins with director Hansal Mehta's voiceover reminding us what a thankless job Manmohan Singh had taken over.
Indeed, acquiring the most powerful job in the country can't get worse. Wait wait. It can get worse.
The trailer introduces us to Anupam Kher as Manmohan Singh. Here's where the plot really thickens.
I mean, the turban is fine, the voice is tucked down, the vocal chord seems as if the winter chill had got into it, the resemblance is impressive, if you are into imitations. But is that what this film aspires to do? In that case, a mimicry artiste would have been even better than Anupam.
Sunil Grover, perhaps?
These thoughts vamoosed from my head as the trailer progressed and the Congress helmers Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were shown as purely evil Machiavellian schemers who had the pure-as-the-Ganga Singh clamped by his errr, jowls.
In one telling moment of the turgid trailer, Gandhi (played by Suzanne Bernert -- an actress who thinks imitation is the best form of flattery) tells the dedicated, humble, patriotic, soft-spoken (etc) Singh, "How can you resign now with so many scams hitting the party? This is not the right time for Rahul to take over."
So now we finally know why Gandhi allowed Singh to remain the Prime Minister. To protect her son from the scams. Clever, mama, clever. What a devious son-screen.
Then there is the film's 'sutradhar' Sanjaya Baru played by Akshaye Khanna. He goes around behaving as if he knows something that no one else does while 'Rahul Gandhi' played by Arjun Mathur and 'Priyanka Gandhi' played by Aahana Kumra bustle about trying to find a place in the plot, much in the same that they did in real life.
The trailer of "The Accidental Prime Minister" comes just a day after the trailer of "Thackeray". Both are propagandist cinema meant to show the protagonist in the brightest light possible. But Thackeray has Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Not that it makes much of a difference.
Neither Singh nor Balasaheb would have imagined sailing in the same boat some day. Cinema is definitely more democratic than politics.
(The views expressed in the article is that of film critic Subhash K Jha and do not reflect the views of The New Indian Express)