Rahul Desai
Abhinav Kashyap’s mystifyingly empty homage to masala cinema remains the worst film of Ranbir Kapoor’s career.There’s nothing blatantly wrong with Kapoor’s performance as Babli, but it often feels like he’s lowering his own standards to be in sync with the film’s brand of entertainment.
Kapoor’s Prem fit right into the vintage mold – as an updated model of the pantomime hero made popular by his father and grandfather. His reading of body humour, in particular, would evolve into the soul of the other-worldly Anurag Basu movies.
Kabir ‘Bunny’ Thapar is the modern Indian millennial’s wet dream. Kapoor floats between genres with effortless charm as Bunny, lending the character the sort of shapeless ambition that resonates with a culture that’s outgrown morally certain heroes.
Kapoor is mercurial as Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s sexist-toxic-sociopathic-gaslighting-revenge mad heir. There’s usually a nonlinearity about Kapoor’s best performances. It’s so cocky about Kapoor’s talent that it turns his character into a scattered mixtape.
Say what you will about Kapoor’s monopoly of the man-child template, nobody mines it better than him. His Ved cannot be reduced to one label, largely because of how the actor translates an identity crisis into somewhat of a cultural touchstone for Hindi storytelling.
Ranbir Kapoor’s enchanting turn as the deaf-mute protagonist who sees and hears the world as a whimsical fairytale plays out like a giant feeling. Kapoor’s Chaplin-esque ability to snatch joy from the jaws of sadness – and vice versa – comes to the fore.
Rockstar legitimized the birth of the Ranbir Kapoor era. He makes genius look incidental to grief of living – a magic trick that, in the inimitable words of Luck By Chance’s Romy Rolly, announced Ranbir Kapoor as a ‘vul-cano of talent’.