Mumbaikar Movie Review: Vijay Sethupathi and Vikrant Massey Can't Salvage Santosh Sivan's Dispirited Remake of Maanagaram (LatestLY Exclusive)

Mumbaikar Movie Review: Looks like the legendary Santosh Sivan is just not getting his frame right these days. After his attempt at making sci-fi comedy with Jack N' Jill fell flat, the famed cinematographer's recent try at direction - Mumbaikar - now in Hindi also goes the same way. Don't know whether it is the effect of Bollywood, but Santosh Sivan bizarrely went for the remake bandwagon, choosing Maanagaram, the cult hit from Tamil cinema, as the inspiration. And like with most Bollywood remakes, Mumbaikar lacks soul and spunk. Mumbaikar First Look Out! Vijay Sethupathi, Vikrant Massey, Sachin Khedekar Movie Is An Ode To People Of The City That Never Sleeps.

Maanagaram, for the uninitiated, was the debut film of Kaithi and Vikram fame Lokesh Kanagaraj, a critical and commercial hit. For Mumbaikar, Santosh Sivan had borrowed the same plot except the setting is now, of course, aamchi Mumbai. Three immigrants arrive in the city, strangers to each other, with different intentions and expectations. There is a young man who is looking for a job in a BPO (Hridhu Haroon), but he loses his certificates, mobile and money when he mistakenly gets beaten up by three goons.

The actual target for that intended beating was another young man (Vikrant Massey), who aspires to be a cop like his corrupt uncle (Sachin Khedekar) and is in love with Ishita (Tanya Maniktala), the HR manager of the same company where the first young man is about to get employed.

The second immigrant is a family man (Sanjay Mishra) who takes up the job of driving one of the cabs belonging to a dangerous gangster PKP (Ranvir Shorey).

The third immigrant is Manu (Vijay Sethupathi). Manu aspires to be a gangster himself. His quirky intro sees him monologuing Ray Liotta's famous dialogue from Goodfellas to his reflection while his mirror is adorned with pictures of Amitabh Bachchan from Agneepath, Rajinikanth from Baasha and Mohanlal from one of his meesha-piripikkal films (though the caption under the pic erroneously says Naduvazhikal). Vijay Sethupathi carries this quirk throughout and make some of the ordinary moments in the film more enjoyable than they deserve to be with just his inimitable presence. So you can thank the director for actually expanding the character to the protagonist level, which was not the case in the original film.

Anyway, Manu joins the three goons who had beaten up the first youngster, and they plan to kidnap the child of a builder. However, Manu jumbles up on the job and picks up the wrong kid who happens to be the son of PKP. How this kidnapping connects all the characters with each other over the span of a day is what the rest of Mumbaikar is about.

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Maanagaram was appreciated for its clever screenplay, for how it connected the dots and dotted the i's for its characters and their interconnected outcomes, while exploring the insecurities of an immigrant coming to a big city. Chennai itself becomes a character in the film, and Santosh Sivan attempts to give such a facet to Mumbai itself. He also brings an array of credible actors to embellish the remake, while giving the film a lighter tone and spirit.

I really don't know what went wrong with the making, but something is clearly missing in Mumbaikar, be it in its feel, in its impact or even in the framing. I am still utterly unconvinced that this is a film made by the acclaimed cinematographer, where not a single frame remained memorable and the whole film had a dated colour tone, which no amount of film posters strewn throughout could compensate. The editing feels all over the place especially in the initial portions, while the director's attempt to infuse black comedy and quirks falls flat in many places.

Like for example, we see an old man dressed the same way as RK Laxman's famous 'Common man' appear on the screen at multiple junctures. While I get what the director wants to express through in theory, the fruitification of that on screen doesn't leave you in awe. Things happen on screen and lines are drawn between the characters, but the chutzpah that gives the spark to Maanagaram's multi-narrative screenplay skips Mumbaikar, and no amount of Sethupathi and Shorey's effusive acting can do much to save the day. Jogira Sara Ra Ra Movie Review: Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Sanjay Mishra Make This Quirky Slice-Of-Life Drama Fun To Watch!

What's even worse, despite the visuals of CST station, the cutting chai and the vada pavs, the city of Mumbai feels more of a forced thought added to the conversations than a character it deserves to be here. Unlike, how the city is treated in another multi-narrative black comedy set in Mumbai, Raj and DK's Shor in the City. When Tusshar Kapoor and his gang complain about the noise-level in the city, I totally got what they want to convey. Here, not even the drab locales choses could do justice to the Mumbai spirit.

The most engaging bits in the film arrive only in the third act, especially the sequence where Sethupathi, Shorey, Massey and Khedekar has a four-way faceoff in the middle of the road, and also in the middle of the night, though it is just too late by then. The performances range from decent to good enough, with Sethupathi and Shorey scoring the best points with their gallery-pleasing performances. Massey, strangely, isn't very convincing in the angry young man mould, more so with how his character is postured throughout. Debutante Hridhu Haroon is quite good as the unfortunate youngster who can't find reasons to like his new city. Among the rest of the cast, Raghav Binani stands out.

Final Thoughts

Mumbaikar is disheartening, dispirited remake that just couldn't take advantage of a clever, ready-made screenplay and a bunch of good actors, coming across as a major misfire at replicating a cult film. Mumbaikar is streaming on JioCinema.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 02, 2023 08:48 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).