Phata Poster Nikhla Hero | Bollywood Film | Hindi Movie | Personal Reviews

Rajkumar Santoshi is a master storyteller who have shown excellence and versatility in his movie direction career. His latest offering Phata Poster Nikhla Hero (Title manipulated, may be for some numerology stuff!) is inspired from his previous movie Ajab Prem Ki Ghajab Kahani.

The movie is bundled with some nice performances for sure. Starting with Shahid Kapoor, this is definitely one of his most versatile performance. Though there are scenes where he looks doing acting (for example, the scene where he meets the police commissioner for the first time at his home and convinces him about his mother and her problem) rather than looking natural. But, overall he is up-to-the-mark. Illena delivers a bubbly performance quite effectively. Though her screen presence is not so effective (her teeth makes her not looking that great).

Padmini came to the silver screen after long and delivered a powerful performance. She is convincing. Mukesh Tiwari is loud! We wonder, why such a talented actor doesn’t get roles to his level and have to settle for small roles like this? Saurabh Shukla is alright. Darshan Jhariwala didn’t get much powerful role apart from few movies like Gandhi My Father, Aja Nach Le, Halla Bol and is now getting a role of comparatively small length. He is an actor with very wide range and given an opportunity can delivered stunning performance. He is not excellent in this movie though. The child actor playing Vishwas Rao looks nice but his performance is average. Zakir Hussain plays his role effortlessly.

Song plays a major role in the success of a Hindi film. If the music album is hit then a lot of production cost get covered from them as well. The music of the film is ear pleasing for sure. Though it doesn’t match that of Andaz Apna Apna or Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani. The good thing about Santoshi movies are they are away from vulgarity and absurd stuff, which keeps rising in Hindi films these days. It is correct in terms of songs and their picturization as well. And after a long time we have a mother-son song in this movie (may be the last we witnessed is in Taare Zameen Par?!)

The cinematography is good and the visuals are appealing. The use of cartoons in the movie title is cool.

Tinu Anand is good in the small role he have to play is this movie. Sanjay Mishra is good as usual.

It must be said that most of the movie content belongs to the masala movie genre. And a majority of scenes will give you Deja-Vu feelings. You don’t have to apply too much logic. The screenplay could have been tight. But as said performances play savior for the movie.

For example take the scene where Padmini breaks down by witnessing the reality of her son. Or Shahid’s reactive outburst to the director Tinu Anand to whom he meet to get a role in his movie. Mukesh Tiwari’s come back and relation with Shahid is too filmy though. The climax scene is capable to bring tears in an emotional viewer’s eyes.

If to talk about the story of the movie, it starts with a very young child who is ambitious to be a film hero. His mother however wants him to get good education, train harder and become an honest, brave and genuine police officer. His mother always try to implant moral and ethics into him and want him to keep focused on the goal. The kid was however was mischievous and his goal was different. To raise him properly his mother drives an auto-rickshaw and earn money. He doesn’t have much details about his father. The bond of love between the mother and the child is amazing though.

The child grow as a youth and still his ambition is to became a film hero and his mother is determined to make him a police officer. Due to his mother he always apply for exams in police department but during the interviews he play foul and gets himself unselected intentionally. One day he got a chance to meet a relative of his friend in Mumbai, who is associated with the film industry as a writer, and he decide to go there. He ask his mother to go there for an interview as the police inspector.

In Mumbai he found that the person he came to meet have contacts in film industry but he himself is a struggling writer and he himself is not set properly. He was asked to make a portfolio of himself. For the same he visits a friend to get photographed in various costumes. And by luck or coincidence he got the costume of a police inspector. After the photoshoot is over he found that his original cloths were taken by someone else and he have left no other way but to go back to home in the same police inspector cloths!

Kajal a girl who is desperate to register a complaint to the police whenever she see something wrong being happened. Her often visits to the police station makes her famous and the staff was kind of feared from her. She see kidnap of a girl in a big car. The girl was the daughter of a chief security officer Mr. Thapa, and the kidnappers were the men of Gundappa – a local don. When Kajal was looking for a help from police she found Vishwas in the uniform of inspector and though of him as a real police officer.

She then asks him to follow the car and save the girl, as it is the duty of police. Vishwas tried explaining her the reality but unable to do so. So will he be able to help and save the girl? Will there be other people who also mistakenly consider him police officer, including the criminals? What will happen to his being a film hero dream? Will his mother or Kajal got to know about his reality? All this questions can be better answered on screen.

It is a complete masala movie which you can watch for timepass. Don’t try applying logic much and just expect fun from the movie, it will not disappoint you in that regards.