Crazxy, Superboys of Malegaon: Reviews This Week

Crazxy: Sohum Shah’s Follow-Up To Tumbbad Is A Wild Ride, Literally

With most of the film set inside a moving car, Crazxy relies on Sohum Shah’s gripping performance and high-stakes scenarios to keep audiences engaged, Swetha Ramakrishnan reviews.

Dir: Girish Kohli

Cast: Sohum Shah, Nimisha Sajayan, Shilpa Shukla

Playing in: Theatres

IT TAKES IMMENSE COURAGE and gumption to make a follow-up film to Tumbbad like Crazxy . Because while Tumbbad is rich in craft, culture, mythological references and horror tropes, while also spanning across decades and characters from different generations, Crazxy is a racy thriller that spans a mere few hours in a day, follows around one man entirely (with minimal other characters) and most of the film plays out via phone conversations in real-time. But trust Sohum Shah, the producer and the lead actor of both films, to pull it off. Don’t get me wrong, Sohum Shah is a great actor, and a decently good-looking man (with an extra splash of a dad bod) but even so, mounting a 2-hour film solely on one character is… 'crazxy'.

The film begins with Dr Abhimanyu Sood (Shah) leaving his house with a bag of 5 crores. He’s stressed and in a hurry to get somewhere. His boss calls him to ask about the money. He doesn’t reveal much initially but we can tell Sood is in trouble for something, and the money is his buyout. We learn more about the narrative context via small hints — a radio jockey that tells us it’s April Fool’s Day; his ex-wife and current partner, both of whom call at opportune moments in the film to fill us in on Sood’s journey; his lawyer who gives the audiences more info about the legal case he’s entangled in because of medical negligence, which he needs to settle out of court.

At some point, he gets a call from an unknown number and he’s told that his daughter Vedica has been kidnapped and the kidnapper wants 5 crores as ransom. For quite a while, neither Sood nor the audience believes this is real. Could be an April Fool’s prank. Sood wonders why the kidnappers didn’t call his ex-wife, who his daughter lives with. More in-depth phone conversations with his ex (voiced by Nimisha Sajayan) reveal his daughter is 16 years old and has Down’s Syndrome, and Sood has a strained relationship with her. His current partner (voiced by Shilpa Shukla) eggs him to let the “past be in the past”, essentially indicating that he should let the mother handle this problem. But his dad-guilt overpowers him as soon as he learns the kidnapping is very much real, and Sood goes into beast mode trying to protect his daughter.

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Superboys Of Malegaon: A Charming Love Letter To Cinema

Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon is blatant in its love for the movies, obvious in its messaging and overt in its homage. The tenderness is so apparent that there is little space for scrutiny, Ishita Sengupta reviews.

Dir: Reema Kagti

Cast: Adarsh Gourav, Shashank Arora, Vineet Kumar Singh, Manjiri Pupala

Playing in: Theatres

EVERYTHING in Superboys of Malegaon gets better with the mention of cinema. A dying man is told about his cancer diagnosis as something that happened to Rajesh Khanna in the film, Anand . Two sparring friends reconcile only to make a film together. A city gets its identity through cinema, and a man nurses his broken heart by sitting through films that he and the woman he was in love with, used to watch together. Later, we know he has moved on when his wife helps him make his film and he agrees.

Reema Kagti’s new directorial film is an effusive love letter to films and filmmaking. A premise such as this is not an anomaly. The landscape of Hindi cinema is dotted with filmmakers making anecdotal and meta references and films suffused with the aching struggle of people wanting to make it big in the industry. Beyond the sheen of conceit and resentment, one is prone to stumble upon love but the surface needs to be scratched first.

Superboys of Malegaon wears no cover. Kagti’s film is blatant in its love for the movies, obvious in its messaging and overt in its homage. The tenderness is so apparent that there is little space for scrutiny.

The story revolves around a group of boys in Malegaon, a small city in Maharashtra, whose identity comprises watching films. They run several makeshift errands but their main job is sitting in the darkness of theatres.

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