Aa Gaya Hero movie review: Govinda's shabby attempt at reclaiming his lost stardom

In 2014, I met Govinda at his Juhu office. A standee of a film called Abhinay Chakra stood at the side. The film has released three years later, renamed File of Abhinay Chakra - Aa Gaya Hero. And delayed films often face a grim fate. This is a Govinda home production. Not only does it star the portly 50-something actor but he is also credited with story, screenplay, dialogues and lyrics. This Govinda is sadly a desperate and shabby attempt to reclaim lost stardom and fading fame. It’s tragic almost to see that in every frame. No matter how enthusiastic and sincere he comes across, Govinda is no longer hero number one. The film begins with a case of serial bomb blasts. Various men with heads wrapped in saris or scarves, one with a distinctive and menacing laugh, are behind the crime. From a living room somewhere, terrible, terrible computer graphics catapult the man with laugh into a cave where he is facing high tech equipment. It’s so tacky you wonder why they bothered to keep that shot because the cave isn’t significant in what is going to transpire in the next two hours.

Enter top cop Ravinder (Govinda). Till this point, I thought I had a grip on the story. But as more and more characters were introduced, plot points punched in and bad guys killed off, as students committed suicide and a variety of different women danced with Govinda, I totally lost the plot – much like Govinda and the director Dipankar Senapati have. The once-adored star seemed to have reached into his costume cupboard from the 1980s and dipped into scripts from the ’90s to design a vehicle that aims to resurrect his flagging career. There were flashes of hope with filmmakers like Mani Ratnam (Raavan) and even Shaad Ali (Kill Dill) who offered more age-appropriate vehicles. But then came along Aa Gaya Hero. Ravinder is a righteous cop wont to preach and deliver speeches. He’s also quick to shoot, punch, leap, run and break into song because, we learn, women are his weakness. In between posturing and speaking into camera, he keeps breaking into song and dance, each one of which is designed exactly the same – a chorus of backing dancers, garish costumes and Govinda in the centre making light of choreographer Ganesh Acharya’s peculiar moves. The bad men are numerous, including Ashutosh Rana, Makarand Desphande and Murali Sharma, who pitch in with tongue-in-cheek performances and at least seem to be having the last laugh. What else do you do when you have scenes such as the one where after Rana’s baddie character beats up his mother she lies in a hospital bed in need of a transfusion. The first donor Rana catches is the duty doctor, who’s a diabetic! Technically no two scenes match in tone, colour, grading, lensing etc. And if all of this was not bad enough, let’s not even get started on the overt objectification of the women, portrayed as victims or item girls. The dancing hero still has the energy and eagerness, but ‘Aa Gaya Hero’ just makes you wonder kahan gaya hero?