Homi Adajania’s infantile farce ‘Finding Fanny’, which crashed the Monday after it raked in Rs 19.5 crore on its opening weekend, betrays the warped stereotypes some Indians, and Bollywood in particular, has about Goa and Catholic Goans.
The film, which pompous film critic — Raja Sen of Rediff describe as “wickedly fantastic” and “gorgeous ode to a Goa”, is wickedly racist; and is an ode to the bankruptcy of some insensitive Bollywood scriptwriters, directors and producers. Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN, finds the film “charming”, no matter if its liberally spiced with disparaging remarks on (Goan) women, portrays Catholics as perennially drunk and caught in a time wrap of poverty. At one instance the film is blasphemous — Don Pedro (Pankaj Kapur), eager to ogle at a woman through the church window, tells the priest, “What are you waiting for, the Second Coming (of Christ)? You have already waited for 2000 years.”
Finding Fanny is at best farcical. But then has Bollywood learnt to make a brilliantly intelligent hilarious film lately? With few exceptions such as ‘Lage raho Munnabhai’ scripted by Rajkumar Hirani and ‘Oh My God’ adapted by Umesh Shukla from Bhavesh Mandalia’s Gujarati play, buffoonery passes off as comedy.
The insipid ‘Finding Fanny’ road trip is triggered by a 46-year-old letter which is slipped under the door of postmaster Ferdie (Naseeruddin Shah) one night, which he thought was posted to his lady love Stephanie Fernandes. The thought that it never reached Fanny makes him howl, waking dogs and neighbours, not delve silently into the recesses of his mind to untangle the tragic mistake, like an adult. That makes Angie (Deepika Padukone) think it’s her Catholic duty to help others selflessly and convinces mother-in-law Rosie (Dimple Kapadia), Don Pedro, a lecherous artist and her estranged teenage playmate Savio (Arjun Kapoor) to take the trip in a clankety old Dodge, which rolls through the bylanes of Goa, spewing smoke. Anyone in his right senses has to find a place in the local asylum, if after 46 years he goes looking for his sweetheart and hopes to marry her at 70.
Of all the tricks in the book of plots, Adajania scripts the death of Angie’s husband Gabo (Ranveer Singh) by choking on the plastic figurine in his wedding cake (bizarre), all because his mother Rosie was stingy.
The film is punctuated with quirky and wry humour generated from the first Lady of Pocolim — Dimple Kapadia’s awkwardly stuffed posterior, her splitting skirt, her drunkenness, a dead cat double meaning jokes, expletives and sickening non-inverted verbs in every question. Like Deepika Padukone’s “You’r ok no, Ferdie?” and “What man?” One would concede that Goans speak much better English than this. The quarrel with this film is it is located in Goa and there are reviews which paint the characters as Goans. Anil Mehta’s confused backdrop of this film is of 60s Goa, where he chooses crumbling houses, Angie slaying chicken, Rosie being the match maker, an old jalopy which transports them etc, but why is Deepika caught flashing a cellphone? Hello Bollywood, Goans of today live in penthouses, lavish bungalows and drive Audis and BMWs too and holiday in Thailand! And forget lasses, even homemakers get their chicken and fish cleaned in the market itself.
The least Homi Adajania and his co-screen writer Kersi Khambatta could do is, spent a few months, learning, respecting and appreciating Goan culture and civilized lifestyle and crafted his characters with more depth and ‘character’, rather than wasting veterans Dimple, Naseer and Pankaj. Of course Deepika is scintillatingly pretty, but the skimpy dresses, show of cleavage and inner wear (over which she has spit venom on Facebook), the cross in her neck, and doing it out in the fields…..well it’s quintessentially Bollywood, nothing offbeat.
Oh yes! The film has some advice on the perpetual quest for love that fails to deliver poeticism “…..And because life, like love, has no rules, you have to go out there and look for love…..” The finale? Ferdie marries Rosie, after interrupting a funeral and presuming his Fanny is dead. But not before Fanny’s daughter disparages Goan women as promiscuous by saying her mother had 4 husbands and 7 boyfriends. Come on Bollywood give us a break! And poor Angie, the widow of 26, and Savio her suitor, are left high and dry.
Finding Fanny, which claimed to be a breakout film of 2014, except for the fact that Russians have taken over Goan heritage homes, makes no startling revelations. It is a jolly trip, for jolly trips’ sake, a journey without arriving at any destination. Our advice to Bollywood — grow up to craft genuine rib tickling comedy, thrillers, sci-fi, war movies, horror, apart from the uninspirational song and dance fare and love stories dished out in movie after movie giving people nothing to treasure.
