All the six packs in the world can't compensate for an unenthusiastic performance, sighs Sukanya Verma.
Vikas Bahl's Ganapath: A Hero is Born is like that pitiful teenager who has watched too many Hollywood movies and thinks dressing up in wannabe copies of cool trends will impress everybody in his class.
Everything you see in Ganapath is stuff of hackneyed Bollywood masalas and dumbed down Hollywood ambition.
For the sake of novelty, Bahl packages his saviour-of-the-oppressed story in a dystopian future where a hodgepodge of science-fiction and mythological elements combine in the hope of freshening things up. But the tired tropes and painfully substandard treatment ensure it's a complete misfire.
In Bahl's cardboard vision devoid of world building or imagination, a dull conflict between two interracial zones forms the centre of all lacklustre action.
On one side of the 'deewar' as explained by Amitabh Bachchan's bored voiceover, lies Silver City occupied by the wealthy in colourful wigs and fancy dress costumes. Though all you ever see is a night club named Dirty People and a fighting ring with a stadium capacity 1- times the size of the one in Ahmedabad packed to the brim, courtesy some super sloppy VFX.
Foil balloons look more formidable than the drones hovering in Silver City under the technological wizardry demonstrated by Ganapath.
The area outside Silver City is a Mad Max-meets-KGF inspired dusty, bleak terrain reserved for the needy, shabby and starved 'Garib' awaiting their liberator. A prophecy by their elderly leader Thalapathy (Bachchan) believes in the arrival of an avatar who'll blurt the magic words 'Ganapath Aala' and come to the aid of the subjugated.
It's time for Guddu (Tiger Shroff), Silver City;s resident Casanova and handy hustler in John-The Englishman's (Palestinian actor Ziad Bakri snarls through the part) stable to channel his inner Kung Fu Panda sans the humour or the heart.
Lessons from a rebellion's blind master (Rahman) and a nunchaku wielding warrior Jassi (Kriti Sanon) follow over a course of logic defying song and romance.
What you actually notice is how Guddu has the worst luck in fathers. His adoptive father buries him alive while his biological father makes him sprint on a carpet of cactuses.
Or how salon set Jassi's golden tresses appear in the middle of dry air and dirt.
But the height of hypocrisy is people who refuse to pay their restaurant bill are projected as upholders of fairness and trust.
Nothing in Ganapath is of any consequence, be it the hokum backstory and tacky dialogues, characters whose only significance is a blink-and-miss flashback or a background score wildly oscillating between streetstyle hip-hop and Sanskrit shlokas.
Kriti's dynamic introduction scene shows her coming to Tiger's rescue and flexing her action heroine chops with elan. It's all tokenism, of course, as she volunteers to slip in damsel-in-distress mode and drown herself in melodrama while the leading man basks in the limelight to play a game of trick or treat.
Once again, Tiger's muscles hog all the attention to show off his dancing moves and fighter punches. But all the six packs in the world cannot compensate for an unenthusiastic performance.
Bachchan bows out of this drivel early on in the movie and saves himself from needless torment and awkwardness.
Ganapath's greatest undoing is that it never really started and isn't quite done.
All through this 134-minute bore, a mysterious figure in a floor length hoodie and his Transformers style tiger robot appear to be watching the show from the sides.
When the person's identity is finally revealed, whatever curiosity arises, out of courtesy, instantly dies when Ganapath decides to end it on a flimsy cliff hanger and announce its intentions for a second part.
The future is truly dystopian if what it holds is more of Ganpath's recycled junk.
