Munna Michael movie review: This Tiger Shroff film makes even Nawazuddin Siddiqui look bad - Hindustan Times
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Munna Michael movie review: This Tiger Shroff film makes even Nawazuddin Siddiqui look bad

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By
Jul 22, 2017 04:04 PM IST

Everybody, including Tiger Shroff and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, is out of sync in this film. Here’s our movie review. Rating: 1/5.

Munna Michael
Cast: Tiger Shroff, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Nidhhi Agerwal
Director: Sabbir Khan
Rating: 1/5

Tiger Shroff plays a MJ fan while Nawazuddin plays a gangster in Munna Michael.
Tiger Shroff plays a MJ fan while Nawazuddin plays a gangster in Munna Michael.

Remember Lena hai, lena hai? A hit song of the 90s from a film titled Bomb Blast. That was the last time we saw Ronit Roy dancing. Here’s the video to remind you of how it looked.

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He shakes a leg again in Munna Michael after almost three decades, and that makes for a promising opening. His character believes Michael (Jackson, of course) lives forever, but getting thrown out of his dancing troupe, wavers his faith in dancing as a profession. So, he takes to drinking. This is what disillusioned artists do in Bollywood. But that’s not all. He then finds an orphan in a dustbin and brings him home. Because this is also what Bollywood does.

Watch: Our Facebook Live discussion on Munna Michael and Lipstick Under My Burkha

Like typical Bollywood kids, this one too grows up to become Munna (Tiger Shroff), a super dancer, in one song. His antics and need for money takes him to Delhi where he begins teaching dance steps to Mahinder Fauji (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a land shark and a closet dancer. Their fine-tuned bromance goes for a toss the moment Dolly (Nidhhi Agerwal) enters the frame. Oh, we never saw that coming!

Just joking.

Now, it’s finally a film where everybody would look disinterested and jump at a chance to break into a song. Why? Because this is what Bollywood does.

Some assistant must have reminded Sabbir Khan that it is 2017 and the film is looking like the glossier version of the ‘80s movies. So, he brings in the idea of dance face-off and a reality show. How would you fit in Tiger Shroff otherwise? How innovative!

Taking a cue from MJ’s signature moonwalking to picking a dialogue from Wong Kar-wai’s Chunking Express, Sabbir Khan keeps trying to infuse Munna with traits that can strike a balance between Delhi and Mumbai. It’s simple math. Base the film in two biggest territories because that is what Bollywood does.

He isn’t done yet, but Tiger Shroff can’t bear the pressure anymore, so Sabbir Khan shifts his focus to Nawazuddin, one of the finest of our times, and makes him do one of the most bizarre roles of his lifetime.

Hamming his way to Hotel Bluestar, a property he owns in Delhi, Siddiqui probably knows how it is going to look in the end. Still he tries to not seem completely clueless. His efforts go in vein though. It’s sad to see him sleepwalking in Munna Michael after a top-class performance in Mom.

Khan’s vision of making Nawazudin Siddiqui acrobats doesn’t help either. You can easily figure out the body doubles. Even if you don’t, background dancers make sure you do. Their close ups are so over the top that you would wander whether they all decided together to look in a certain way?

Talking of close ups, the award for most exciting close up goes to Farah Khan who judges a reality show in Munna Michael. Her enthusiasm knows no boundary and every time Tiger Shroff does a summersault, you wait for Farah’s ‘oh my god’ reaction.

All this is happening because Dolly wants to make her father proud by becoming an accomplished dancer. By the way, we never meet her father. She announces her arrival with these lines:

Hil jaande sab mere naal, jab main shake karaan
From UK to Nainital, sab shake karaan.

It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but her striking similarity with Kriti Sanon might have prompted Sabbir Khan to cast her. Sanon was the heroine of Khan’s earlier film Heropanti.

Her debut isn’t impressive, but you can’t signal her out. Everyone, with special mention of Pankaj Tripathi, is equally out of touch in Munna Michael.

MJ should live forever, MJ will live forever, but this isn’t the right tribute to the moonwalking King Of Pop. This forgettable 138-minute film can be better described as this one-liner somebody whispered in the dark right before the end credits: Ye sab alag hi zone me hain (They’re in a different zone).

Interact with Rohit Vats at Twitter/@nawabjha

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Rohit Vats is a film journalist who loves to read in between the lines. He can spend hours watching films and cricket matches. Also a script consultant.

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