Fanney Khan Movie Review: Great Performances, Flawed Plot

Anil Kapoor, who is easily one of the most versatile actors in Bollywood today, played comic roles in his past couple of films like Welcome Back and Mubarakan, but the evergreen actor is back to drama with a bang in Fanney Khan, a film that suffers from a flawed plot despite some stellar performances.

The film revolves around blue-collar worker Prashant Sharma alias ‘Fanney Khan’, a former orchestra singer, who dreams of making his daughter Lata a top singer. On her part, Lata (Pihu Sand), an overweight teenager, is perpetually surly with her father for no reason despite the fact that he is always supportive and encouraging her to pursue her dreams.

When a broke Prashant discovers that top singer Baby Singh (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) gets paid lakhs to merely attend an event, he promptly kidnaps her after she crosses paths with him and then ropes in loyal sidekick Adhir (Rajkummar Rao), a mild-mannered simpleton to help him pull off a kidnap-and-ransom plan so that he can cut an album for his daughter Lata. However, instead of demanding money, Prashant asks her manager Kakkad (Girish Kulkarni) to prepare in his studio a number based on the lyrics and tune that he has composed so that he can make Lata sing it… absurd much? Exactly!

But as absurd and weird the plot is, I absolutely loved Anil Kapoor in the film. The man never ceases to amaze with his performances and your heart goes out to him when you see him struggling to fulfill his ungrateful daughter’s dreams. The second highlight of the film is the supremely talented Rajkummar Rao, who is so endearingly naïve and sweet that even the sophisticated Baby Singh falls for him. Aishwarya is decent enough while Divya Dutta is competent though Girish Kulkarni looks damn weird with the spiked hair and the sideburns, even if he is able to project sleaziness through his eyes. Pihu Sand, who makes her debut with this film, is quite good and deserves a pat on her back for her work.

As far as the film is concerned, the only scenes which held my attention were the ones involving Rao and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, though the kidnap plot as a whole seems too far-fetched and wafer-thin. If that was not all, the climax scene has been handled quite badly and seems to send across a message that it is OK to perpetuate a crime as long as the motive is to do something for an off-spring. Also, though the trailer hinted that the makers may take on the issue of body shaming in the film, the phenomenon has been swept under the rug in the film as the plot takes another avatar together.

In conclusion, though Fanney Khan has some great performances, the story will certainly prove to be the film’s undoing.