Movie Review: Fugly | Filmfare.com

Director: Kabir Sadanand

Cast: Mohit Marwah, Kiara Advani, Vijender Singh, Arfi Lamba and Jimmy Shergill

To know the world needs change and to know how to bring about that change are two different scenarios. Most of us think knowing that there's something wrong with the system is enough to be the change. Turns out that is a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe Kabir Sadanand spends more than two hours cooking. He tries hard to get the right dramatic punch. Operative words being "tries hard". Unfortunately for him and his well-intentioned film, it doesn't work out.

For starters the cast gets it woefully wrong. This is a film about four youngsters fighting the good fight against power and corruption. The kind of premise that worked in movies like Rang De Basanti or Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. The subject has potential for memorable drama and grit. That prospect though goes to waste through half baked performances from Mohit Marwah, Kiara Advani, Arfi Lamba and Vijender Singh. The four lead actors look clueless in most scenes. There are flashes in the pan suggesting all four have the talent to be onscreen. But in Fugly their efforts seem to be lost and without conviction.

The writing doesn't help either. Here you have four desperate young people being terrorised by a corrupt cop. They're being forced to steal, sell drugs and plot murders and yet at the first chance to party they pull out fancy dress costumes and dance like there's no tomorrow. Of course Hindi cinema has taught us the merits of suspension of disbelief but you don't leave your brains behind in a story trying to expose the fallacies of politics and police.

Despite its abysmally ineffective screenplay there are a few things Fugly does get right. It's aimed as a fight against all that's ugly in our world today. Most of which is portrayed in the form of the rampant eve teasing and public molestation that happens in Delhi. It also shows the double standards people employ while judging others. Fugly highlights social evils with great effect. But the film's dramatic punches are severely uninspiring. There could've been a genuine sense of loss, misfortune and heart breaking irony. Instead all you get through the misadventures of the four lead characters is vanilla tragedy. It's what movie circles call a certified cop out.

While the protagonists may be struggling, the antagonist of Fugly drives its steam. A huffing, puffing Jimmy Shergill shows you what menace can be. Pity then that even his character suffers such a passé finale.

For the uninitiated, the term Fugly was born online. It's a witty of the f word and ugly. Put together they denote something more than just not-pretty, something that is repulsive. But the word has a zestful pun. It's almost always used with a fun connotation. To use it to describe real scenarios and life-altering themes is to perhaps employ mix metaphors.

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