It was crystal clear from the trailer itself that Sidharth Malhotra and Tara Sutariya starrer Marjaavan is not going to bring anything fresh to the table. In fact from the trailer, I thought that this is some parody of the typical 80s Bollywood Masala films.
Interestingly, and sadly, that is not the case. The writer has actually taken the story, dialogues and action sequences of the film very seriously. The audience, however, fails to do so, for obvious reasons. Set is the formula of an 80s masala film that it may well have been concocted in a test tube by a particularly evil scientist.
Following the exact footprints of its 3-decade old predecessors, the film has everything from a tacky storyline to cringy dialogues to unrealistic action scenes. Let’s take a closer look at this week’s release in our Marjaavan Movie Review.
Marjaavan Movie Review- The Plot
Sidharth Malhotra’s Raghu is an orphan picked by Anna (Nassar) from a gutter as a baby. Anna’s trusted hitman now, the adult Raghu ensures the gangster’s twin businesses of prostitution and water tanker mafia-run smoothly. The trust that Anna has for Raghu doesn’t sit well with Vishnu (Riteish Deshmukh), Anna’s 3 foot-nothing son. Vishnu believes that Raghu has taken his place in his father’s heart and has neither forgiven his father nor Raghu for the slight. He, of course, blames his height for it all.
Raghu, meanwhile, takes his eyes off the goal after a luminescent Zara (Tara Sutaria) enters the frame. Given that women have nothing much to do in such films anyway, Marjaavaan takes away the agency altogether from her and makes her speech-impaired. Vishnu soon gets the chance to wreak vengeance but instead of an all-out battle, he prefers an excruciatingly stretched poetry slam with Raghu.
Marjaavan Movie Review- The Upside
The only takeaway from this film is its soulful music. Songs like Tum Hi Aana and Thodi Jagah hit all the right chords with the listeners.
The actors have tried to give as much as they can with a shoddy script like this. Riteish as the dwarf don seems to be in on the joke. While Sidharth is earnest even with ketchup-y blood covering most of his face, and Tara refusing to ham it up, Riteish is the only one who seems to know the sort of schlock he is a part of. And after the over 2-hour long viewing, so do we.
Marjaavan Movie Review- The Downside
Director Milap Zaveri (Mastizaade)– who has always believed in ‘why just say something when you can turn it into a limerick, a rhyme or a PJ’ – doubles up as the dialogue writer too. You get such gems: ‘Main maroonga to mar jayega, dubara janam lene se dar jayega’, ‘Bagavat ke liye ijazat ki zaroorat nahi … rok sake is sher ko utni tum kutton mein taqat nahi’ and ‘Mandir aur masjid dono milenge … guzrega is desh ki jis gali se … madad milegi har kisi ko … maango ya Ali se ya Bajrangbali se’. I can go on but I think it will only encourage the habit.
Marjaavan Movie Review- All In All
Given the film’s negatives and some very few positives, it can surely be the next Gunda 10-15 years down the line. And why not? It has all the ingredients we see in a cult classic today.
Whether or not those very attributes will be associated with the word “cult” a decade from now is a different tangent altogether. But in the present, the film deserves nothing more than a single star out of 5. You can easily wait for it to be available on any of the OTTs, no need to waste money in a theatre.
