Simran: Kangana fantastic but Simran is not

Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Soham Shah, Esha Tewari Pande, Aneesha Joshi

Rated: 6/10

If it was only about Kangana Ranaut, this would have been a top-notch film. She is near perfect, full of role and rebellion, easy to the camera, a bundle of expressions and a solid pivot. In fact, so singular is her presence in the film that you wonder why Bollywood does not have more woman-central films.

However, Kangana is focussed, Simran is not. Kangana is riveting but Simran is confused. Kangana hides no shades and has many, while Simran gets aimless, confused and directionless after a while.

It is sad that the actress and the film are poles apart. Just a little bit of a purposeful storyline would have made it a movie to be with and a tale to remember. But the director was so confident of his lead heroine that he forgot that even she would need to tell a coherent tale with the ability to build up a climax. That’s why Simran sags despite Kangana soaring.

As a 30-year-old Gujju divorcee in Atlanta with dreams to buy her own house by saving from her housekeeping job in a plush hotel, she is waylaid by gambling, goons, intimidation and robberies. So much so that the film too gets waylaid from telling the story of an independent, fearless, brash and delightfully negative woman, to a rigmarole where everything, even Kangana’s efforts, gets caricaturised. Quite a pity to see such potential and such individual effort go down a pock-marked plot.

After movies like Tanu Weds Manu and Queen where the story enhances the histrionic acumen of its leading leady by leaps and bounds, expectations from Kangana have been sky-high. So, if a film grounds her flight on the popularity charts, there is something wrong with the movie, not Ranaut. Simran proves this, and in the process, looks accusingly at the story writer and director.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 17 September, 2017