Rocket Singh review: Mice mice baby

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Gauhar Khan, Shahzan Padamsee, Chopra Prem Chopra

Director: Shimit Amin (drowsy)

Rating: Two stars

Oho, here’s a quote room drama. Everyone, including micro-minor characters drop the kind of dialogue you could only hear in the movie-shovies. Some gems:

*“In business you shouldn’t be counting numbers, you should be counting people, strictly people.”

*“Out here you can either go up..or down” (whoa, what a thought)

*“What nice nice! Mice are nice also.” (oh?)

*“You taught me so many things in life but you forgot to teach me dishonesty.”

That’s story-screenplay-lyric-dialogue writer Jaideep Sahni working far too strenuously for director Shimit Amin’s Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year. The ouchcome is a laboured, old-fashioned harangue about why honesty is the best policy, which even revives that defunct moment of a corporation’s honcho chucking wads of Rs 500 for a bribe. Cursed be this tribe, say Shimin and Co, as if they had recently discovered that the world isn’t either pancake flat or yummily utopian.

Indeed the plot – which has shades of the Raj Kapoor movie Shriman Satyawadi (1960) and Hollywood’s The Boiler Room (2000) – is so naïve that you wonder if Sahni and Amin need to get out of the Yashraj Studio Fantasyland and understand that there are no free munchies in this town. Or any town.

Which is why their hero, Harpreet Singh Bedi (Ranbir Kapoor), appears to a cute but ultimately clueless clown. Frown. With lousy graduation marks, he still hopes to find immediate employment. And hallelujah, he does, as a computer salesboy who’s immediately assigned a desk near the loo, and hoo-hoo teased by all of his colleagues, behaving like hyenas out of hell. Oh well.

The hyena gang chucks paper rockets at him (you worry about the wastage of tree resources), his supervisor wears a weird Salvador Dali-like beard, and the oily top boss calls him a “zero” and “a bastard” till you want a messianic stunt director to arrive and bash up Boss Oily. Cluck, no such luck.

Logic would have enticed our Cutepreet to resign, snag a job at a call centre perhaps (a friend even suggests that), but no our self-pitying hero insists that he must suffer like a duffer. Otherwise there would be no film…which stretches on and on and on for 16 reels, uninterrupted even by entertainment relief points. No dance, no romance, no (real) song, no tension, you’re mostly locked up in that stifling office which ranges from the plush to the unbelievably grungy (please note the electricity dashboard). Odd.

Next: Cutepreet teams up with the more accommodating office log to initiate a parallel computer-selling trade. Soon they’re rocketing. Upset by his plummeting sales, Boss Oily is seething-snapping-scowling. Growling. Now get this. Cutepreet insists that he’s only borrowing the office facilities and intends to pay Oily some day, complete with interest. Commit a crime now, repent later.

Although the dramaturgy ends up blurring the line between scamming and honesty, a holier-than-thou attitude is maintained throughout. Sure do tell us that corruption and shortchanging the customer don’t finally pay… but please tell us that with clarity and conviction. As for the finale, centering around a phone call, it happens so much by coincidence that it doesn’t ring true at all. Without revealing the resolution, suffice it to say that it’s as deflating as a punctured tyre.

Any redeeming moments? Um, yes the banter between Cutepreet and his granddad (Prem Chopra), their morning prayers, and the no-nonsense attitude of the telephone receptionist (Gauhar Khan, impressive), as well as stray vignettes from the opening graduation party. On the techfront, Vikas Nowlakha’s cinematography and Manas Choudhary’s sound design are A-grade. The editor needed a sharper scissor though. Woe. Saleem-Suleiman’s music is eminently forgettable.

Debutante Shahzan Padamsee is wasted in a briefer than brief role. Frankly if Rocket Singh…is worth a glance it is essentially for three remarkable performances. Naveen Kaushik, as the weirdo beardo supervisor, is marvellously mercurial. As the garrulous top boss, Manish Chaudhary, is convincing. Above all, Ranbir Kapoor keeps you engaged despite the ill-written script. For instance, his backstory is missing. Whatever happened to his parents? Why was he brought up by his dadoo? Gentle, courteous and repressing his anger, Ranbir Kapoor is excellent. Alas, the rest of Rocket Singh…isn’t.