Cirkus is proof that the Indian audience has moved on, but Rohit Shetty hasn’t

In a later episode in Netflix’s The Romantics, producer-director Aditya Chopra opens up about the failure of his last directorial feature Befikre, which released in December, 2016. He says that perhaps the Indian audience wasn’t ready for a film without any ’emotional core,’ or not ready to take that kind of a work from him. One wonders what would director Rohit Shetty choose as a reason to accommodate with the failure of his latest, the weirdly titled Cirkus, that released last year during Christmas and now on OTT. The Indian audience? Lack of comedic core? Or Ranveer Singh? Streaming on Netflix now, you would have to brave 139 minutes of strictly unfunny ‘comedy of errors’ to know why.

Kindly enough, both Befikre and Cirkus also feature an unnecessarily beefed-up Ranveer Singh in the lead. If it weren’t enough, Cirkus has two Ranveer Singhs trying hard to make you laugh and none succeeding an inch. The actor, who has slowly but surely made his way through intense character-driven roles, delivers his career-worst performance in Cirkus. There’s no escape from the fact that the actor tries hard when it comes to comedic timing, but here in Cirkus there’s a certain stubbornness in his comedy that makes the performance(s) all the more exhausting.

This stubbornness stems more so than ever in the script of Cirkus, that is reportedly based on Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. Cirkus revolves around the set of twins (Ranveer Singh and Varun Sharma) who are separated shortly after birth and the chaos that ensures years later after they encounter each other as adults. The script, written by Yunus Sajawal, does not even try to differentiate between the two Roy’s and Joy’s- both look, behave and express in exactly the same painfully tedious manner. The thread of connection? Roy 1 can do dangerous magic tricks using electric currents in his Circus without feeling anything, but when he does so, it is Roy 2 who gets those shocks. Illogical doesn’t even begin to describe this theory, as there are more in store which I am saving for you to discover in their unspoiled banality. Its the situational brand of comedy that Rohit Shetty seems to have perfected in his own self-sufficient Golmaal franchise.

Compared to Cirkus, the Golmaal films do seem like distant masterpieces. The void created by the lack of comedy in Cirkus is filled with an extremely gaudy palette in the film. It seems like all the colours have unspooled in the fake set designed for the film, giving it an unfathomably garrish look. Except for Ranveer Singh, ironically, whose flamboyant fashion choices in real life might have fit the world of Cirkus to the toe. Here is saddled with high waisted pants and dressed in pitiful dark shades. Nevertheless, what were the makers trying to say through this relentless use of colour in the set decoration? That the world is healing? That in the Rohit Shetty universe, there’s only joy and happiness? That there’s no need to think about the current reality living in the post-pandemic world, and enjoy the unmitigated joy that is Cirkus?

With one foot firmly planted in the 90s cinema of excesses and humour, the makers of Cirkus are blindsided by the fact that the Indian audience has already moved on. There is no thread of connection between the film and the audience: the film exists in its own colour-coded world of errors. Cirkus is proof that Rohit Shetty and team have obstinately chosen to disregard the fact that the audience is not interested to look back, and more so when there’s clearly no logic to what happens on screen. The audience is not interested in the brand of 90s humour anymore, nor are they going to queue up for a film that has no respect for them in the first place. The jokes that abound in Cirkus, calling a person ‘motu,’ dimwitted characters having ridiculous names like Momo, Mango and Chikki, and making caricaturish faces in close-ups come off as juvenile and moronic. Time and time again, the character played by Murali Sharma breaks the forth wall and talks to the audience as if they haven’t understood what has been happening. At one moment, he even prompts for the song to arrive and says, “Music!” If this is the brand of humour that the makers feel would make someone giggle, they are horribly mistaken.

Now returning to the self-sufficient statement made about the Indian audience that they weren’t ready for Befikre, who’s going to tell them that they were ready- just not for caricature in the name of romance or comedy. Now that Ranveer Singh features in both Befikre and Cirkus is perhaps the only connecting thread- an actor trusting and prioritizing well-known directors above scripts time and time again. Karan Johar’s Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani arrives next- which should have released by now, but now stands conveniently postponed till July. Kjo says, ‘sabr ka phal meetha hota hai.’ Hopefully the audience is ready for the meetha core this time around.