The Playboy Mr Sawhney: Cliché-addled, risible, anachronistic, near-offensive when not downright terrible

Cliché-addled, risible, anachronistic, near-offensive when not downright terrible, The Playboy Mr Sawhney is 25 plus minutes of dispensable hokum. The director sets out to encourage the audience to look beyond a person’s popular reputation and reach out to the human being lying there, anxiously awaiting a single, tender glance. A noble intention indeed. But the story he chooses to communicate this message — quite poor by itself — is further plummeted due to endless exposition, reductive treatment, awful dialogue and an overweening tone-deaf anachronism. Had it not been for Jackie Shroff, Divya Dutta and Tahir Raj Bhasin’s earnest, ever-reliable performances, The Playboy Mr Sawhney would have been simply unwatchable. [caption id=“attachment_5851281” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The Playboy Mr Sawhney. YouTube screengrab[/caption] And really, what the hell is the point of Sudhir Mishra’s befuddling cameo act as Satyajit Ray! Shroff is Yashpal Sawhney, an ageing playboy and widower who is, quite predictably, a peddler of doggerel, a drunk and a lover of jazz. (I’m tempted to place an emoticon here.) Bhasin, his grandson, is revealed in an awfully shot opening scene to be having girlfriend problems. Sensing despair, grandpa decides to give the ingénue a glance at the mysteries of womanizing. Sawhney relates the stories of three women from his younger days, conveniently slotted as pretty and ambitious, man hating feminist and a Bollywood actress paying the price of fame. By the time the stories are finished, grandson dear, in keeping with the playbook, has learnt the ropes and cultivated awe for Sawhney’s art and endless love for his dear departed wife. Tariq Siddiqui fills this vacuum of a story with clichés from planet cinema, writing from railway station paperbacks and installs a camera damn well where he pleases to complete his film. Just to be sure, there is no sense of self awareness in here. What you’re seeing is precisely what you’re supposed to get. There’s even a tracking shot of a Catholic family — obviously spouting dialogue in terrible accent — that ends by revealing a cross. Clearly, the makers were not only aware of their intended audience, but left no stone unturned in patronising them to kingdom come. The less said about the depiction of women in the film, the better. There is a distressingly propagandist shade to the flaccid characterisation. Sawhney, the hero of Siddiqui’s tale, ironically ends up coming out as the worst of the lot. The director’s attempts to drape him in the robes of an incorrigible lover end up falling flat on their face. All this is particularly debilitating to witness considering the first rate acting talent that seems to have walked into the film sets. Which reminds me, what exactly is Sudhir Mishra doing in here playing Satyajit Ray! Apart from this mind-boggling mystery, the film remains flat throughout, occasionally salvaged from ruin by the quirky songs that play at the end of Sawhney’s telling of his dalliances with the three women. This touch of unashamed nostalgia distracts from the cultural and aesthetic myopia that afflicts TPMS. I admit the blame lies with me for expecting anything better from a film with a resolute agenda beneath the apparent noble idea it brandishes like a victory flag. But everyone must remember that only the stench of the vanquished and the dead rises towards these flags from the grimy battlefields. One day, it will become damn near unbearable and the audience will walk out for good. Watch it here: