Roy Review: Ranbir, Arjun and Jacqueline were big let downs in this painfully boring movie

Roy is a very good looking film. Beautiful exotic foreign locales, a menthol cool color palette, a model level attractive cast of Arjun Rampal, Jacqueline Fernandez and Ranbir Kapoor. It looks like a big budget advertisement for bathroom fittings and I mean that as a compliment. Sadly that’s all there is to the film, and it’s only the latest entrant in the gigantic pantheon of movies featuring style over substance. [caption id=“attachment_2097161” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Courtesy: ibn live[/caption] That’s not to say director Vikramjit Singh doesn’t try. The plot of Roy is actually more than what you expect it to be. There’s a mystery involving a Master Thief Roy (Kapoor) who deals in art heists and is on the run from the cops. On the other side a filmmaker Kabir (Rampal) who is inspired by the Master Thief and begins crafting a character based on Roy. Kabir romances another filmmaker while Roy gets jiggy with an actress, and both the roles are played by Jaqueline Fernandez. We see juxtapositions of Roy’s life with Kabir’s, and slowly reel seems to drip into the real. It’s a fairly good concept, unfortunately the execution is dull and plodding. This is a film that has the veneer of a serious and intelligent thriller but is yet another potboiler along the lines of the Neil Nitin Mukesh classic Aa Dekhein Zara. Singh takes things a bit too seriously, while still trying to pander to the mainstream audience. That way ironically the film exudes the dual nature of the people in the film, and fails to deliver. There are loud, mainstream level songs shoehorned into a narrative that wants to be a thriller. It just doesn’t compute. Hilariously, some of Rampal’s dialogue about the negative elements of a bad film apply to this movie. Talk about meta filmmaking. Speaking of which, Rajit Kapoor shows up as the investigating officer, pulling off a cringe inducing caricature of Byomkesh Bakshi. Five minutes into the film you can see the end twist coming. It’s bad enough that the reveal is lame, but it’s worse that the film makes a string of unintentionally funny attempts at ‘shocking’ you in the end. The biggest problem with Roy is the central cast. Fernandez isn’t known for her acting prowess, so to place her in a dual role only means darkening the shade of her hair by a notch. She’s the exact same character with both men, serenading around Malaysian Islands and ushering in needless songs. Rampal doesn’t have much range either and isn’t likable enough to care about his conflicted persona. Weirdly, no one seems to be happy to be in the film, beginning with Ranbir Kapoor who only exudes two expressions – a bored smile and a bored frown. He’s generally electric, so in Roy it feels as if he lost a bet and was forced to appear in the film to repay his debts. Fans of Ranbir might be excited by the prospect of their hero doing stuntwork in the trailers but they’ll be disappointed with the final product. At two and a half hours Roy is a slog to sit through with too many unnecessary songs and diversions and not enough meat to either thrill or entertain. If you’re in the mood to watch a ‘film within a film’ and a character crossing over from reel to reality, a better recommendation would be The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project.