Some 10 minutes before the end of the film — which would be like 30 years outside the theatre — Arjun’s Kabir exclaims in incredulous bewilderment: “I don’t know yeh film kaise ban gayi!” He was talking about ‘Guns Part 3’. I want to ask the same about Roy

Have you seen turkey being roasted in front of you? Like a whole turkey rotating and rotating and rotating on a skewer? It’s skin getting charred, the flesh changing colour, the bones shrinking. Over hours and hours which seem like years and years. Watching Roy is the closest you can get to that feeling. Like an eternal sunshine of the clueless mind.

Okay, most importantly, this is not a Ranbir Kapoor film. The posters and trailers may tell you otherwise — when have they ever been true? — and the credit reads “Ranbir Kapoor in a dynamic role” — what does that even mean? — but it’s just an extended cameo. It was supposedly a friendly gesture because nothing else in the world could have made him sign up for this thankless role in this thoughtless film.

Ranbir’s called Roy, yes, but he is just the lead in the film that Arjun Rampal’s Kabir Grewal is making in the movie. And Roy comes and goes depending on whether Kabir is feeling inspired enough or is hitting a writer’s block or falling in and out of love. At one point since he couldn’t come up with what happens next, Kabir leaves Roy in the middle of the sea for months. Oh poor Ranbir! 

Kabir, of course, is Guido from Fellini’s 8 1/2, and it’s not just about the black hat on his head or the signature sunglasses or the cigarette dangling from his lips. He’s supposedly had 22 girlfriends even before the film starts and hangs around hotel lobbies and bars for a few floozies more. Plus, there’s the financier sitting on his head and a wife-like manager (Shernaz Patel) urging him to get his bearings back.

It is around this precious moment somewhere in Malaysia that Jacqueline Fernandez’s Ayesha Aamir surfaces from the swimming pool and teases Kabir’s testosterone. She is a filmmaker too! Just imagine. While he is making ‘Guns Part 3’, she is filming ‘Malacca Diaries’. That’s what they say, but what they do is sip wine, dance on the beach, drive around and exchange deep philosophical discourses that do not belong to this movie. 
While Kabir and Ayesha do all this in the film, Roy and Tia (also played by Jacqueline) do the same in the film within the film. Both romances are equally bland and boring. Then Ayesha figures that her romance is being used for the script that Kabir never wrote. And she flies back to London even as Roy marinates on the ship waiting for Kabir to advance the plot and help him return to land.

First-time filmmaker Vikramjit Singh knows how to mount a scene and direct his cast, but his writing lets him down completely. Like Kabir, he too seems to have gone in with a vague idea and thereafter faced severe bouts of writer’s block. And somewhere he must have just thrown his hands in the air and finished the script by typing out the same sentence over and over again ala Jack Torrance: “So what, I have Ranbir Kapoor!”

Nothing else can explain why an entire five-minute song is filmed on Ranbir driving a bike across Malaysian highways in slow motion. The expression on his face, not just in that song but throughout the film, is dazed and confused. For Arjun, it’s more like one of his modelling assignments — looking good, strutting around, just being oh-so-cool. And ordering Macallan whisky with exactly three ice cubes. Yes, it’s that kind of film.

Jacqueline is like former Indian cricketer Robin Singh, who made a career out of two cricket shots — a pull and a flick. The former Miss Sri Lanka has a happy face and a confused face, and she keeps alternating between the two till it’s time to break into a song and then she lets her thighs take over. They express better. 
Some 10 minutes before the end of the film — which would be like 30 years outside the theatre — Arjun’s Kabir exclaims in incredulous bewilderment: “I don’t know yeh film kaise ban gayi!” He was talking about ‘Guns Part 3’. I want to ask the same about Roy.
 

Pratim D. Gupta
Is Roy the worst film of the year so far? Tell t2@abp.in