Beautiful

Beautiful is the classic tale of the manic pixie gone famous despite not looking for it, still in love with her poor boyfriend who doesn’t always understand her, misunderstandings crop up between them, but they patch up in the end (no spoiler there), yada yada yada. This tale conceptualised by RGV but written, shot and directed by his new protégée Agasthya Manju is the same tale often told in old Hollywood and Bollywood classics. But what’s unnerving about the film is that it’s called an ode to Rangeela. When Rangeela released, it was path-breaking in a myriad of ways. An odd tribute from a stereotypical film.Rini (Naina Ganguly) and Mayank (Parth Suri) are two poor, yet much-in-love people from Dharavi and their characters are the gen-next versions yet poor caricatures of Mili and Munna from Rangeela. Rini is the manic pixie dream girl of many a teen boy’s imagination, someone who will dance like a dream in the rain, pout at her boyfriend’s sexist remarks and make up by kissing him by the beach. She is content with the share she’s been handed in life, unlike Mayank, whose aim in life is to have his own workshop. He’s egoistic and is probably meant to be an ‘old-fashioned male’. Fate comes knocking on Rini’s door when she’s ‘discovered’ by a director and is immediately cast as the leading actress in his next film. Cue scenes of her climbing the career ladder with the help of a sharp manager, who wants to protect her image and misunderstandings galore as a result. More time is spent in Beautiful in showing off Naina’s dancing skills by making her do random steps that are meant to be sensuous and camera angles that try too hard to peek up her skirt or down her blouse than flesh out these characters well enough for this film to work. The music by Ravishankar isn’t exactly stellar for the audience to at least be invested in that. Naina’s performance is over-enthusiastic, complete with animated body language and lots of hair flipping. Parth seems painfully stuck in a movie right out of a nightmare, knowing he deserves better but making the most of what he’s handed.Beautiful is definitely not a film to expect a lot out of. But when it fails to at least engage, it turns into nothing but a headache inducing experience.