Roy.

                                                                       

If you haven’t watched, don’t read, for the makers of Roy have tried to bill it as a romantic mystery. 

You know what I think my biggest beef with Roy is? That they cheated the audience by advertising it as a Ranbir Kapoor movie, when in fact it is an Arjun Rampal movie. Kapoor is in it in a “dynamic role”, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Now, I understand why they would do that. Who in their right minds would want to pay multiplex ticket rates for Rampal and Jacqueline Fernandez? But I’m still bristling from the blatant cheating.

If you've read enough mystery novels or watched similar movies, it is going to take you 10 minutes to get to the bottom of the so called plot. If you've not, but are a reasonably attentive and logical person, it should still take you no more than 20 minutes to correctly predict what the Big Twist in the movie is.

 And that’s the thing with thrillers, you see. If you can tell whodunnit, what is the point?  There could have still been a point if there was enough Kapoor, or a well told story in the entire exercise.  But no.  I don’t know what director Vikramjit Singh was aiming for, but someone should tell him “high art” is only possible when there is some actual substance to it.

Roy looks mature—it is a quiet film, which is a welcome change from Bollywood’s melodrama and garish colours. But that’s about it. The entire film feels fake—the characters talk like some of Deepak Chopra’s tweets, a string of heavy or deep sounding words that lie next to each other without really meaning much.  Sometimes they even sound like Salman Khan’s tweets.

The protagonist is a super successful movie director, who has built his empire on the success of the franchise of a movie called Guns. There’s Guns 1, then Guns 2, and now he is writing Guns 3, over which he is breaking major sweat. Guns is, as you can imagine, about guns, heists and the like.

Besides being the director, he is also obviously the screenwriter, or the movie won’t be.

I can’t remember if they mention that important difference, but since I might have drifted in and out of sleep because the movie was so boring, I’m letting that slide.  

Now for more important questions.  You’re writing a story called Guns 3, which is about robberies, for Bollywood. Do you really need to go to Malaysia to seek inspiration for this? 

Deep breath. He’s a rich guy, and rich guys can afford to do such things. So let that slide too.

I’m not sure what time period Roy’s set in, but Rampal the director/writer uses a typewriter and wears a Fedora, even indoors.  There is a scene where he puts the thinking Fedora on just before he starts typing away. I am laughing even as I write about it, same as I did in the theatre and I don't think Singh was trying to be funny in that scene.

Anyway, because Roy is no Mad Men, said Fedora fails to add to style and sophistication. Ok, there are moments where Rampal does look handsome in the hat, but then he is a handsome man with or without. And even Don Draper wouldn't wear those indoors, because you know, manners.

While Rampal nee Kabir Grewal is struggling to write his story about a robbery, he runs into filmmaker  Ayesha Amir, who is Fernandez in a pair of glasses, which I am thinking is an attempt to make her look like the creative type. 

There is a romance. Set in picturesque Malaysia, there is another romance. Roy is the name of the protagonist of Guns 3. So when they say Ranbir Kapoor is in a “dynamic role”, it could have meant that he isn’t a real character. He’s fiction within fiction. So fictitious Roy’s love interest is Fernandez again, this time dressed in expensive, sophisticated clothes, portraying Tia.

They are careful not to show the neck tattoos that the director Fernandez sports, on Tia. Tia is rich and has a painting that Roy steals and then is miserable because he loves her and cheated her.

Ayesha reads books. Kabir sends him one and buys her drinks. Tia rides horses, Roy … well I can’t remember. I think he just stares at her. This is all meant to be very intellectual, by the way, because these sequences are peppered with lines like "Hum insaan hamesha kisi aur ki zindagi churake jeena chahtey hain", or the infitinely more conundrum like "Kya tum woh ho jo log kehte hain ya jo log kehtey hain woh banne ki koshish kar rahe ho."

 Then, when reel and real romance meet, you are meant to gasp. Only, I can't fathom why the movie makers thought it would be gasp worthy at all, because they have already told us Rampal is writing a story and have introduced Kapoor right as he talks about the protagonist, in true Bollywood cliche style, lest you miss the correlation.

Speaking of, Singh has crammed so many of these cliches, or symbolism if you will, into the movie I think it's a miracle my head did not explode.  Examples?

Rampal and Kapoor are both sad (since the author makes his protagonist go through the exact same feelings he is experiencing) and don't know what lies ahead. Hence, Roy is on a boat, adrift. I've already told you about the thinking hat bit. Rampal talks about the trials of fame and has a goldfish in a bowl for a pet.

If they were honest and made a low-brow masala potboiler, these tropes could have passed on as an attempt to lift the movie up. At best, no one would care. 
But Singh is trying to make this into a highly intellectual movie and is so caught up in making the packaging look good, he forgets to put anything in the box.

So we have to live with the fact that a very rich guy wants to make Guns 3 and needs inspiration for it. He can afford to spend a lot of money and go to Malaysia, so he does. The rich guy is either schizophrenic or the director is just enacting Guns 3 in a parallel setting, but there are so many bits that don't make sense. We are expected to let it all slide in the name of director's/poetic licence, I suppose.

But you will have realised, that is "letting slide" all of the movie.

I really want to know what made Ranbir Kapoor sign this project. Maybe it was the "dynamic role" and maybe once we decipher what that really means, it will all become as clear as daylight and everyone will understand what the point of this movie was.