Diljit Dosanjh, Sonakshi Sinha, Karan Johar, and a whole lot more
Chakri Toleti
Comedy
2018-02-23
Hindi
1/5
I am not averse to nonsense but I am allergic to BS. You make a movie with decent actors and we assume, you have something to say but Toleti only wanted to splurge on his personal Bollywood dream.
So Welcome to New York is about a IIFA extravaganza (the big award show that takes place in various cities around the world on an annual basis) where Teji (Diljit Dosanjh) and Jeenal Patel (Sonakshi Sinha) are chosen as contest winners who will be experiencing the whole IIFA experience. Both are obviously smitten and bitten by the Bollywood bug though neither thinks they will be lead actors ever. Teji is basically a recovery agent who bleeds cinema and Jeenal is a self-proclaimed fashion designer and dreams about cinema.
Everything is going well until we realise that it's not as simple as they have made it out to be. There are ulterior motives and some sly games that are being played on the side, and more so, there are two Karan Johars (himself) who are omnipresent in the film. Karan and his twin brother, Arjun, can’t see eye to eye, and Arjun is mighty envious about Karan’s Bollywood success so he cannot stand anything related to the films Karan makes.
What begins with chaos, ends with a sigh of relief from the audience because they have finally get the reprieve to leave the theatre premises and scream FREEDOM! What was Toleti trying to achieve is rather simple: he wanted to create a mad-mad-mad comedy but he didn’t bother with direction. There are some jokes that make you laugh but they are so few that you are on the verge of tears by the time the next one comes by. Without any thought to script, acting and premise, Toleti has created a film which only makes you frustrated enough to stuff your face with popcorn so that you don’t abuse out aloud.
The WELCOME TO NEW YORK experience has left me with some very pertinent questions, besides ‘what was Toleti thinking!’
Firstly, how did Toleti manage to get actors like Diljit, Sonakshi and even Karan Johar, for that matter to agree to do this film? How come so many actors agreed to do a cameo in this film? How did Toleti manage to get producers for this script? What was the purpose of making this film?
WELCOME TO NEW YORK looks like a film made by a brat who knows nothing about filmmaking but is too stubborn to allow someone knowledgeable to take the baton forward. The dialogues, the songs and the acting are all horrendous. There are continuity jerks and every stringent hamming all through the film. It is obvious that there was no one really working on the sets other than the line-up and the set hands.
The director for sure hasn’t worked diligently on the script, nor on giving his actors a semblance of a direction. Alone Dosanjh manages to pull audience out of their slumber. Sonakshi is so loud and disgusted through the film, that we believe she herself might have felt like she has entered a nightmare with this film. The director has not even bothered pushing the music directors into giving something different or fun for his film. He has simply shot and released the film with minimal effort. If the director has worked towards this fiasco, it is rather unfortunate because none of his efforts show. Sonakshi’s character for instance is like a caricature, Karan Johar hams mostly but is not at all effective. Diljit has moments but they are lost in garish script.
With the premise and the purpose of this film asunder, we can only hope that the actors were paid in advance.
Comments (0)