Blackout Review: Vikrant Massey Goes For Wild Swings in the Dark

Director: Devang Bhavsar
Writers: Devang Bhavsar, Abbas Dalal, Hussain Dalal
Cast: Vikrant Massey, Sunil Grover, Mouni Roy, Anant Joshi, Ruhani Sharma, Jisshu Sengupta, Saurabh Ghadge, Karan Sonawane, Chhaya Kadam

Duration: 130 mins

Streaming on: JioCinema

Blackout stars Vikrant Massey, but it unfolds more like a Kunal Kemmu crime caper gone wrong. “Gone Wrong” is an interesting phrase in this context. Things going wrong is, as this genre argues, the entire point of such movies. Comedy of errors, some call it. The template is just that: Everything goes wrong for an ordinary guy over the course of one night. If the story feels crowded and ridiculous, the film can claim it’s deliberate. Chaos is the language; the worse it gets, the better it apparently is. Blackout has all that intersecting noise: A city-wide blackout, an accident, a minivan full of gold, a dead body to bury, a poetry-spouting drunkard, two broke influencers, one random damsel, a Bengali detective, an ex-MLA, a conspiracy, a brooding gangster, a shootout, a treacherous spouse. But the film’s going-wrong is what goes wrong, if you get my drift. If you don’t, well, I’ll just say it’s deliberate.

The stylized intros, unimaginative (Anil Kapoor) voice-over, non-linear gimmicks, the trying-too-hard dialogue, criss-crossing tracks, Bollywood needle drops, spoofy treatment – 130 minutes is 45 too many for a film like this. A character lip-syncing the Baadshah (1999) title song does not a Baadshah make. (Though the use of ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ in a scene where bullets are pumped into the sky makes for the film’s best gag). 

Over-the-Top Vikrant Massey is a Fail

Massey visibly struggles to play an over-the-top underdog. He tries to be that exasperated middle-class sod, but the film’s comic timing is at odds with his high-strung humour. The protagonist he plays, Lenny D’Souza, is a crime reporter whose only evidence of work are the cartoonish sting operations he pulls on cops and politicians. It’s like he’s watched too many Danish Sait skits. Lenny comes home one night to his pretty wife Roshni (the Pune blackout has no reason to exist other than the “andhere mein roshni” pun) and she urges him to buy condoms. Lenny, who looks like a parody of someone named Lenny, promptly leaves in his car. It starts raining. He bumps into an old friend. And on his way back, he has not one but two accidents. Lenny makes two mistakes. What follows is a desperately madcap night that, among other things, devolves into a wronged-gangster tragedy that Noughts-era Mohit Suri would be proud of. The tonal shifts are supposed to be part of the mess, but one suspects it looks funnier on paper. 

You know you’re in trouble within the first few minutes when the bottom of a cooking vessel becomes a point-of-view shot. All is fair in the name of love and dal makhani, I suppose. Lenny also cracks a terrible joke about his wife’s culinary skills – “You and cooking are like Cristiano Ronaldo and cricket: No connection at all” – which sets the stage for the film’s many clunky one-liners. Actors like Sunil Grover, who plays one of Lenny’s four reluctant passengers, pull off a few quips, as do real-life influencers Saurabh Ghadge and Karan Sonawane, but the randomness of the adventure is too loud. There’s one particular gag featuring an old Muslim trader who takes ages to unlock his shop. In theory, the reaction shots of Lenny and gang work well, but the scene leaves you uneasy with its cultural appropriation and juvenile off-screen banter. There’s also an emotional death scene that’s quickly followed by a corny revelation about Lenny’s personal life; the rhythm is too haphazard to pass it off as intentional clutter. 

Searching for Quirk

You can tell that the film is attempting everything to be a whimsical Lootcase-styled comedy. I can even accept that Pune is conveniently deserted at night whenever the story needs to stage a calamity or two. (I’ve always felt sorry for storytellers in a country where the density of population renders most crime thrillers unfilmable – try finding a kilometer without people and witnesses). It’s a difficult genre to ace, because at some level, it’s hard to tell the flaws from the fun. Most of the goofball violence is hard to enjoy because the film is very aware of its own formula. Lenny’s bad luck becomes repetitive after an hour. His “Bitch please I’m a unicorn” t-shirt is probably the quirk this film aims for. 

To be fair, Blackout does push the limits in how shamelessly foolish it strives to be. That’s seldom enough, though, at a time where screwball comedies count on the viewer’s perception of reality. Blackout could have been sharp and entertaining had it constantly called itself out. But it remains surprisingly hollow and, at times, dull despite the visual restlessness. The chuckles-to-runtime ratio is poor. The idea might be to turn Lenny’s life into a franchise. It is after all Vikrant Massey’s moment – his 12th Fail colleague Anant Joshi even shows up as his best friend here. But it’s hard to shake off the irony of the title. At the end of the day (or night), Blackout is very much the equivalent of wild swings in the dark. With heat waves everywhere, the film’s literal and figurative lack of electricity is hardly comforting.