Finding Fanny ~ A Review

Since there was loads of work to finish I didn’t find time to blog. Hence, the late review.

Tuesday (Sept. 16, 2014), I went for Finding Fanny, alone. Ever since I left Pune, this is the first movie I watched in Bangalore. The experience of watching a movie alone after all these months, in a literally empty theater was quite a different feeling.  However, the experience was ruined totally by the movie. Here is my review:

Star Cast:

• Naseeruddin Shan - Ferdie the postman
• Dimple Kapadia - Rosie (Angie's mother-in-law)
• Deepika Padukone - Angela/Angie
• Arjun Kapoor - Savio (Angie's childhood sweetheart)
• Pankaj Kapoor - Don Pedro the painter who lechers after voluptuous women
• Ranveer Singh (cameo) - Gabbo/Angie's husband, who has an unfortunate accident on his wedding day

Was it a movie worth watching and recommending to others to view? Was the movie created just for the heck of it or for any specific message? Was it a movie that would leave an impression on people? The answers shall vary. Was the movie good? Well, that is the only question I can answer perhaps. 

To start with, the movie opens in a quaint little fictitious village in Goa, where everybody minds everybody else's business. 

The story revolves around a road trip undertaken by five mismatched Goans  (no offence to the Goans, since I love Goa and the people there) from a sleepy Goan village after local postman Ferdie finds a letter mysteriously returned to him that he sent decades ago to his beloved Fanny. Assuming that her lack of a reply to his marriage proposal meant that she had found someone else, he’s been pining for her ever since.

Getting wind of the situation young Angie, a widow (since her husband dies on the wedding day after choking on a figurine on the cake), decides to organize a road trip in an attempt to find and reunite Ferdie with his lost love (read Fanny aka Stefanie Fernandes). The road trip also has other travellers - the imperious Rosie (with a massively padded posterior, supposedly to give the comic effect), lecherous artist Don Pedro, Savio, Angie’s childhood sweetheart who’s still bitterly resents her for having chosen his friend Gabbo to marry, and a cat named Nareus, who is un-catlike in his behavior. Fanny is shown as a pretty girl who ends up as a fat, bloated woman. Ferdie's hope that Fanny will be the same, pretty girl after all these years, seems unrealistic. Despite some instances (hoping to tickle the funny bone) like the cat not landing on its legs and being flung out of the running car, Finding Fanny quickly loses its way.

The initial plot and backdrop of the movie, where the postmaster receives a 46-year old, undelivered letter, reminds one of R. K. Narayan’s stories. The chain of events  that leads the team going on a hunt feels like a rubber band stretched to the extreme. The perpetual quest for love fails to deliver the intended poeticism.

I watched the English version, since the time I went only this version was being shown. Maybe the dialogues in Hindi would have been funny. But it can’t change the story.

The movie was as dysfunctional as its characters.  Of course, there were a few instances where you could guffaw, smirk and maybe LOL, but the storyline is quite weak. True, this is a stream away from the commercial, masala genre, yet it was quite lame a film.  But the ride to find Fanny was quite a bumpy one, hoping it would end soon. Had the ending been different, then maybe it would have been a likeable movie. 

My rating: 2/5

P.S. This is my personal view of the movie. It doesn’t intend to dissuade anyone from watching or enjoying it. Individual opinions differ.