Poor handling of serious issue
Chitkabrey-Shades of Grey Hindi (A) Cast: Ravi Kishen, Rajesh Shringarpure, Sanjay Swaraj Director:Suneet Arora
Old college friends meet at a resort with their wives/girlfriends. The men discuss their dirty, naughty past while the women scan each other’s throat for expensive necklaces. The jewellery talk and the ensuing ‘wows’ are tolerable. Then, the women decide to discuss more serious issues (say, straying hubbies) and you cringe.
The tear glands do their duty, but sorry, no expression makes it from under tonnes of pancake. The men are better. Or at least their makeup is better.
Chitkabrey is such a childish execution of a serious issue (ragging) that the message is irretrievably lost in between. Even Ravi Kishen (leading a pack of eight men) can’t do much to avert the disaster.
He plays a ragging victim who gets back at his seniors after 15 years. Now a psycho, Kishen is still licking his wounds from the nasty hostel incident when he was stripped naked. It’s tit-for-tat time and Kishen holds his erstwhile tormentors hostage. It’s up to the wives/girlfriends to arrange the ransom amount. And as they are kept inside a hall — with an invisible Kishen giving Bigg Boss-like orders — the men go on their knees, say mea culpa. Too late. Kishen won’t let them go without repaying his share of torture.
And the viewer suffers more than Kishen’s kinky gang. There could have been some bold and brazen moments in Chitkabrey. But a clueless cast destroys the possibilities. Unintended, crude, comedy is the result.
