The Vvaan Movie Review:
In the past 12 years, TVF became a definitive part of the Indian storytelling landscape, first rebelling against everything conventional and formulaic with their spoof videos, and then becoming the posterboys of ‘relatable’ long-form stories on OTT. However, somewhere in middle of the delirious fever-dream-like experience that was The Vvaan, I realised they had never made a feature film before — the Sidharth Malhotra-Tamannaah Bhatia starrer fantasy-drama, which TVF has produced in collaboration with Ektaa Kapoor’s Balaji Telefilms and 11:11 Entertainment, marks their first. Unfortunately, it also represents everything the banner once proudly fought against — archaism, artificiality and cliches.
Sidharth Malhotra plays Rishi, an engineer, and more importantly, an atheist. He is happily married to Mamta (Tamannaah Bhatia), and the two have been trying to conceive for years now. A land property dispute compels Rishi and Mamta to return to the former’s village, where Rishi is compelled to battle the superstitious beliefs of all villagers, around the revered forest that lies at the centre of their village, and remains an inseparable part of their culture. Circumstances eventually force Rishi to rethink his stance as he discovers his link to the forest, learning that he is destined to protect it indeed.
Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Tamannaah Bhatia, Anup Soni, Sunil Grover, Shweta Tiwari, Maniesh Paul, Sulabha Arya
Directed by: Deepak Kumar Mishra
With a wayward narrative that has no arc, it becomes difficult to root for Rishi. (It doesn’t help that Sidharth Malhotra looks like a fish out of water, trying to sell us moments about the power of devotion.) Right from the opening scene, where Rishi saves a young scene, there is an unexplained rush to the scenes. The film never feels comfortable with its rhythm, always racing through its plot points, as if afraid of the audience’s unforgiving attention span. Intense scenes are abruptly followed by comic scenes, if not interspersed with comedy themselves. Scenes feel stitched together like a badly sewn patchwork quilt, instead of flowing into each other. A song sequence arrives perfunctorily every 20 minutes, because things get too dull otherwise by ‘commercial cinema’ standards. In a scene with an Ayurvedic doctor, a young kid is arbitrarily shamed for his skin tone. Tamannaah Bhatia’s character slips in and out of narrative as per convenience. There are shockingly blatant product placements. Amidst it all is a Deewaar-styled god-facing monologue, which only reminds you of the desperate formula-chasing by writers here. All that was missing was a fart joke, and the makers make space for that too — this here is the filmmaking equivalent of those paint-by-number colouring books that have caught on recently.
It’s also hard not to shake off the aspirations of building a Kantara-like experience, even though it makes no efforts to maintain the requisite mood. A sequence towards the end also feels consciously reminiscent of the ‘Dheevara’ sequence from Baahubali, in terms of its grandeur. However, there is little original to the special effects, and even dimmer efforts into the world-building of it all. (At one point during a major backstory, the voiceover literally says, “and for some reason, a temple was built then.”) If this was a film any more polished or proficient, I’d have felt worried at the subliminal messaging with the ‘Mandir nahi tootega’ moment towards the end — but the film doesn’t do enough to earn your fear either.
As a thin silver lining at the end of this boring tunnel, Maniesh Paul makes an appearance as hero’s best friend Ved Prakash. His scenes have practically nothing to do with the main story, and yet some of the moments with him and the adorable Sulabha Arya provide some comic relief. He is the closest thing we have today to what Johnny Lever was in the 90s, for in those fleeting moments, it’s possible to forget that one is probably watching a very bad film.
When I watched The Vvaan trailer, looking at Sunil Grover in a promisingly dark role gave me some hope and excitement. Finally a different challenge for the talented man, I thought to myself. However, at one point after Rishi (Sidharth) delivers a monologue about the powers of goddess, the actor says in a deadpan style to his goons without missing a beat, “Le lo Iski” (Thrash him hard). I laughed out loud — except The Vvaan isn’t a comedy.
Yet, there’s something so off about the tonality of almost everything in this film — be it the delivery, plot devices or the staging — that it feels deliberately parodic. For TVF, which made a parody video about Ekta Kapoor’s daily soap phenomenon, it’s a moment of full circle and the joke is now on them. The Vvaan is undoubtedly the most tedious Hindi film of the year so far.
