Missing a beat

Ravi Jadhav Riteish Deshmukh, Nargis Fakhri, Aditya Kumar, Dharmesh Yelande, Ram Menon

Somewhere inside Banjo is a sweet, spirited film about a band of slumdog musicians. You can see it in the innovative way in which director Ravi Jadhav sets up the band members.

There’s Paper. He’s called that because he delivers newspapers (but he also spends several hours a day fetching water for his family, so Paper’s grandest dream is a water tanker parked outside his shanty).

Grease spends all day covered in car oil and dirt — he fantasises about a white home, white clothes and even a white watch. And then there’s Vajaya, who only wants to get on an airplane so he can push a button and have an airhostess ask, ‘How can I help you?’.

These guys put a smile on your face. I was hooked instantly.

But Jadhav’s unique voice gets flattened out quickly. The culprits are a convoluted, overstuffed storyline, excessive visual razzmatazz, and an uneven soundtrack.

Jadhav is a celebrated, National Award-winning Marathi film director. He’s making his Hindi film debut here, but much is lost in translation. The flashes of freshness are drowned by the illogical melodrama. After all, how seriously can you take any film in which a permanently pouty Nargis Fakhri roams around Mumbai slums in tiny shorts looking for a Banjo band? Her character, Chris, is a New Yorker who comes to Mumbai without any leads — she doesn’t have a name or even a photograph. But she’s mesmerised by the music.

Mostly Banjo is an overcooked mess.