FALTU Movie Review : Not exactly Faltu

You are a veteran producer and are relaunching your oneflop-old son in a film called Faltu . Give it to Vashu Bhagnani, in ego-centric Bollywood that requires guts. The bright side of FALTU , you realise, is that the film makes no sham. Watch it for what it’s worth, and it’s fun. Oh — there’s a message tucked in too, for effect.

FALTU broadly rehashes Steve Pink’s 2006 Hollywood film Accepted , which cocked a snook at the loopholes in traditional education system in the US. The problem is universal and the plot agrees with the Indian set-up too, although credit is due to choreographerturned-debutant director Remo D’Souza for fashioning his own tale using the Accepted formula.

The idea, for those who came in late, has already been attempted in Bollywood by way of last year’s dismal dud, Admissions Open. FALTU stands for Fakirchand And Lalchand Trust University, a college that the film’s no-gooder heroes ‘ launch’ out of compulsion.

Ritesh (Jackky), Nanj (Angad Bedi) and Puja (Puja Gupta) have barely managed to pass Class XII with marks that won’t fetch them admission in any college anywhere. Ritesh is scared his dad will now force him to look after the family bhangaad business. Puja’s father is threatening to have her married. And Nanj could be altogether disowned by his Mridangam-happy appa . There’s solution, of course.

Fake admission letters of the imaginary college named FALTU, and a bogus website of the institution built by their geek buddy Vishnu (Chandan Roy Sanyal) are in order to convince the dads.

The trouble starts when the dads insist they want to drop them at college on the first day. The guys now need a real college building, so Ritesh consults Google Chand (Arshad Warsi), a man with solution for all problems. It’s an unrealistic film. But FALTU works as a coming-of-age story about a bunch of losers who gradually find motive in life.

Somewhere down the eyewash exercise of ‘going to college’ to please their parents, the wild bunch figures out what they were meant to do. The film has genuine shots at laughter. The package is youthful and FALTU regales as a commercial entertainer.

Producer papa Bhagnani may or may not manage to revive Jackky’s career with this one. The film clicks as an overall package, after all. But Jackky, as also the rest of the cast, carry off their rather halfbaked well.

It’s a cute packet of fun that exploits every masala in the old-school Bollywood textbook to tell a new story. With some help from Steve Pink, of course.

Rating -3/5