Shehzada
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Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar
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Selfiee Movie Review
Plot Summary – Vijay Kumar (Akshay Kumar) is one of the millions of die hard fans of superstar Bollywood actor Om Prakash Agarwal (Emraan Hashmi), an RTO inspector from Bhopal. Omprakash’s only wish is to meet Vijay Kumar and take a selfie with him. Incidentally, Vijay Kumar comes to Bhopal once for shooting. Vijay Kumar’s driving license is required for filming the climax shot of the film which is now lost due to some reason. Obviously, that responsibility falls on Omprakash. Omprakash expresses his desire to take a selfie on the occasion of the license for which Vijay Kumar himself is expected to come to the RTO office. Because of the love of his big fan, Vijay is also ready for this but before Vijay’s arrival there is a huge crowd of media. Vijay misunderstands that all these press men are invited by Omprakash for his own publicity and the matter takes a strange turn from here on. Vijay tells Omprakash a lot in front of his little son which infuriates Omprakash too, and Vijay and Omprakash have a bickering competition. How it ends and the misunderstanding between the two is resolved is the next story.
What’s special?– ‘Selfiee’ is an official remake of the 2019 super hit Malayalam movie ‘Driving License’ starring leading Malayalam actor Prithviraj Sukumaran and Suraj Venjaramoodu. Usually, after watching the original movie, most of the time we get the feeling that Bollywood movies are not as good as ours. But ‘selfie’ is an exception. Basically a very simplistic plot that would have suited a TV serial or web series better but National Award winning director of Malayalam cinema ‘Sachi’ penned a screenplay that suited the Malayalam audience and critics alike. It was adapted into a Hindi script by Rishabh Sharma and directed by Raj Mehta. After ‘Good News’, ‘Ajib Dastans’ and ‘Jug Jug Jio’, ‘Selfie’ is the fourth film directed by Raj Mehta. The duo of writer Rishabh and director Raj have kept the core of the original movie pretty much the same and made some minor changes for the Hindi audience which is commendable.
The storytelling style is also very straight forward or somewhat like old nineties movies so if you as an audience expect lots of twists and turns and today’s trendy style of story narration, you will be disappointed. But despite this, the film does not drag anywhere due to the pace of the screenplay. Romance, however, is missing as both the characters Vijay Kumar and Omprakash are shown married in the story. Of course, due to this, the film falls short in terms of lyrics and music. Both Akshay Kumar and Emraan Hashmi have done great works. Diana Penty and Nusrat have not done much. The film is fine in terms of cinematography and background music and other technical aspects. Akshay and Imran’s clash in some scenes is fun to watch.
What is innovation?- Being an official remake, it cannot be said that there is innovation in the story, direction.
Where it falls short?- As mentioned earlier, the way of telling the story is likely to feel a bit outdated. Especially to today’s young generation. Those who enjoyed the nineties will not experience this problem. Moreover, as a total entertainer, the film lacks lyrics and music. The confrontation scenes between Akshay and Imran should have been more intense and thrilling.
Watch it or Not?- But it’s not something to watch even in theaters. Even if you have watched the original movie ‘Driving License’ available on OTT platform Prime Video (with sub-titles), you will like ‘Selfiee’ slightly more because you are closer to Akshay Kumar than Prithviraj the actor. So there is no problem waiting for it to come on OTT.
Star rating – 2.5 stars.
