Movie Review: The Shaukeens

Director: Abhishek Sharma

Cast: Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Annu Kapoor, Piyush Mishra and Lisa Haydon

The Shaukeens is inspired by Basu Chatterjee’s Shaukeen (1982), which had Ashok Kumar, Utpal Dutt and AK Hangal playing lonely old men looking for some sort of an excitement in their life. They find it in the form of a free-spirited girl, Rati Agnihotri, in Goa. Their feeble attempts to impress the girl lead to hilarious situations. The film offered a lighthearted take on how age has nothing to do with men being men but nowhere did it cross the lines of decency, thanks largely to the efforts of the veteran actors.

The old men came out as naughty but not lecherous but that’s not the case with the remake, where Mauritius takes the place of Goa and Anupam Kher, Annu Kapoor and Piyush Mishra take the place of the original’s veterans and Lisa Haydon takes the place of Rati. From the very beginning itself, Anupam, Annu and Piyush behave like dogs in heat, ready to pounce on every available female. There is something of frat boy mannerisms in their actions. It’s not that we haven’t heard of a herd of middle-aged men taking a flight out to Bangkok or Russia to have some private boom boom time. It’s a side to the society we decide to ignore. But broad comedy isn’t the way to show such things. A certain subtlety was needed which has gone missing.

The film would have been reduced to being a series of episodes featuring dirty old men behaving badly if writer Tigmanshu Dhulia and director Abhishek Sharma had not decided to include the track of Akshay Kumar playing an alcoholic version of himself. The actors shines in all the insider jokes, especially in the scenes where desperate for a National Award, he hires the services of a Bengali art film director to teach him method acting. His colleagues and family have also appropriately chipped in to laugh at themselves and at him. We would love to see more such inspired performances by Akshay soon on celluloid. Lisa Haydon too gives a credible performance as a ditsy today’s girl more in love with her Facebook likes than life’s real troubles.

Shaukeen is a lopsided effort – some scenes leave you cringing while others have you rolling on the floor with laughter. A little more quality control would have given us a far better film...