Humble Politician Nograj Review
Level: Savage
I’ll keep it short since there’s nothing much to write about this movie.
Ever since Pushkar Films, Lost and Found Films, and Paramvah Studios invested in HPN, I was elated. It went on to create a lot of hype before release, riding on producers’ past reputation and depiction of Danish Sait’s caricature of a Politician named Nograj on big screen. It was a big letdown. Essentially, the movie is a montage of all Nograj sound bytes and visuals done via facebook live and youtube videos. I for one, did not find anything new or funny that was not already done by Nograj in radio pranks / youtube videos.
Generally, characters in a movie/plot have certain constraints and strengths which lead to unique or somewhat overlapping characteristics, which help audience to make sense of the story. In most of the movies that I’ve watched, dialogues delivered by characters are usually understood by the rest of them, in most of the instances. For comic purposes, there could be scenes where a character explains something in a condescending manner the concept or context unbeknownst to other character(s) and that’s what makes the scene funny. However, in HPN, it appeared as though, Danish is appealing only to the spectators, and spectators get the joke but not any of the other characters, I.e. Dialogues are not written with characters in mind; they’re written to elicit laughter from audience. If you see any scene, none of the characters get what the heck nograj is speaking.
It filled me with a hollow feeling which degraded my interest.
At times, Danish cracked jokes (basically a Whatsapp forward) in his Nograj accent and an abominable lull ensued in the theatre. The only actor, other than Danish, who has done something that is remotely called ‘acting’ is one who played ‘Monjunath.’ Was going to make my way out of the theatre during inter-wall, however, inclement weather and a sunk cost of $12 reminded me to shut it and watch the rest. After the inter-wall, I was sporadically looking at my watch, Linkedin Messages, and even responding to some. On a positive note, it felt like 80% of the movie was in English and made it easy for non-kannada audience to understand (wait, was that sarcasm?). Censor board should have done away with the Power Star jokes — it was so lame. Oh did I mention the Problem-u song? — ‘Shake those tatte idlis’ was the funniest line.
Film does showcase a modicum of reality in that, inept politicians win elections via scams. It is mega-scam season post election. Also, there’s this Kannada Kejru who feels the pain points of citizens and launches a campaign against nograj only to be humiliated by the system and nograj in a final showdown of epic proportions.
In sum, there was no depth to the character(s) or the storyline. Hype and the marketing culminated in the creation of a half-baked movie. I hope HPN 2 is not made. For Nograj the character, movie was a stretch; he is probably better off in Fever 104 FM pranks and youtube videos. I do not dislike the team or the character. I am just providing my perspective on something I felt I would enjoy watching; I was wrong. Probably I expected a lot more from Saad Khan and Team.
