One Cut Two Cut Movie Review: Popular standup comedian Danish Sait is making a genre for himself in Kannada Cinema, with his brand of satire cinema. After French Biryani and Humble Politician Nograj, Sait is playing the lead again in One Cut Two Cut, an absurdist satire about a simple teacher caught in a strange hostage crisis with a bunch of students and a fellow teacher, on whom he has a crush on. Vamsidhar Bhogaraju, who had written for Humble Politician Nograj, has turned director with One Cut Two Cut that he had co-written with his lead star. Late Kannada superstar Puneeth Rajkumar had produced the movie. Late Puneeth Rajkumar’s Three New Kannada Movies From His PRK Productions Set to Premiere on Amazon Prime Video.

Danish Sait plays Gopi, a simple-minded man who has a Masters in Arts and Crafts. His field of choice and his lifestyle often make him a butt of ridicule among his neighbours. Gopi recently gets a job as the Crafts teacher in a worn down government school, where he bumps into another teacher Nagaveni (Samyuktha Hornadu), who had once rejected his marriage alliance. On his very first day, a group of four in Money Heist attire takes his classroom hostage along with Nagaveni and the school secretary.

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The group of four are mere society 'rebels' with no common cause, and who just met a few hours earlier. They are led by Pruthviraj (Prakash Belawadi), a long term All India Radio-host who is disheartened that no one values his work anymore, and begrudges how Amitabh Bachchan became a superstar after getting rejected by AIR for the very same post.

This group, also consisting of an ex-army man, a struggling standup and a fashion blogger, have their 'demands', though they never align with each other. What's more they don't know how to communicate in Kannada, and therefore Gopi has to be a communicator for them to put across their wants before the CM. Whether this is a shade at the 'outsiders' who have settled in Bengaluru, I am not that sure, considering the movie satirises everything under the Kannada sun here. How Gopi manages to win the day for everyone, and impress his crush in the process is what the movie is about.

One Cut Two Cut had got some attention for its lead actor's look, which includes a Hitler-like moustache, and his bumpkin mannerisms that he adopted for the character. The performance feels artificial, and perhaps intentionally so, as the team might be trying something on the lines of what Rowan Atkinson did with Mr Bean. But Gopi is not the quirky factor in the movie, the whole premise is. The reason why Pruthviraj's quartet takes a classroom hostage randomly is equally silly and so is how people in the know reacting to the situation. French Biriyani Movie Review: Danish Sait Is a Treat to Watch in This Madcap Comic Entertainer.

In between, the film touches upon some of the pressing issues, like empty ideological clashes on social media, different 'bans', situation of standup comedy, keyboard warfare, dilapidating situation of government schools (the bit about eggs being 'rejected' for school lunch was quite funny), media preference for TikTok elements over actual news and more.

One Cut Two Cut gets the elements in the right place for a good satire, only it's attempts to be funny using those elements aren't that well-defined. Situations are comedic on paper and the dialogues spoof real life, but the humour struggles to come across well, save for occasional breaches. The issue is that the writing is versed with what it wants to convey, but isn't smart enough turn itself into a stinging absurdist satire. Thankfully, the movie doesn't over-stretch itself, as it retains its minimal setting throughout and wraps up within an hour and half.

Yay!

- Satirical Elements Are Quite Relevant

Nay!

- Not as Funny

Final Thoughts

One Cut Two Cut feels like a Danish Sait sketch except that there are other actors in it and it is stretched to a movie, where the runtime gets inversely proportional to the laughs it ekes out of us. One Cut Two Cut is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Rating:2.0

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 03, 2022 12:19 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).