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Tuesday 18 October 2011

Film My Friend Pinto Review

Film: 'My Friend Pinto';
Cast: Prateik, Kalki Koechlin, Arjun Mathur, Shruti Seth, Makrand Deshpande, Divya Dutta;
Written and Directed by Raghav Dar;



For guys who were impressed with Prateik's praiseworthy performance in Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na and Dhobi Ghat, his latest My Friend Pinto will absolutely come as a major disappointment. Produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and directed by Raghaav Dar, the film comes across as an unfortunate justification for a comedy.

My Friend Pinto revolves around the adventures of simpleton Michael Pinto, who lands up in Mumbai from Goa following the death of his mother to spend a week with his old school friend Sameer Sharma (Arjun Mathur), a yuppie with a dominant wife.

Right from the word go, the clumsy Pinto manages to not only create havoc for everyone around him, but also stays oblivious of the destruction he is causing. In one night, Pinto manages to get separated from his friend and comes across an assortment of characters from a retired don Narayan (Makrand Deshpande) to his moll Reshma Shergill (Divya Dutta) to a wannabe singer (Kalki Koechlin) to a pair of gangsters, who also happen to be twins, to their treacherous partner who has vanished away with the ransom amount following a kidnap and a happy-go-lucky son of an aging taxi driver. Needless to say, Pinto manages to win the hearts of everybody he runs into and changes their lives for good with his simple-minded advice handed over to him by his late mother.

The climax has all the parties coming under one roof, a plush club in the city hosting the New Year's Eve party where after some running around and general mystification, the protagonist is reunited with his friend and the bad guys are detained, but not before opening his yuppie pal's eyes about the value of friendship and love.

Prateik has almost nothing to offer except his appealing, child-like smile. Makrand Deshpande tries to be funny with his heavy South Indian accent, which doesn't really work. Kalki as the inexperienced Maggie who is almost lured to a brothel in North India by a cad with the promise of a singing career looks wasted in the film, as she doesn't have much to do. Divya Dutta proves she has enough 'oomph' factors to play a sexy moll. Arjun Mathur, an enjoyable character in the movie, puts in an honest effort and is maybe the only actor apart from Kalki who doesn't behave over-the-top when compared to others in the cast.

The humor in the film is enormously slapstick and nothing to write home about. Being 'inspired' by the all-time cult movie Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron', there is also a dead body being lugged around the place through the film with the intention of disposing it off. However, what worked for the cult classic doesn't essentially work for other films and this is aptly proved in My Friend Pinto.

Overall, it is an average film with some humor.

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