Review | Rohit Shetty and Ranveer Singh's 'Cirkus' is a loose circuit

A still from 'Cirkus' (2022).

A scientist with a fuzzy pursuit, to prove that upbringing make people what they are, not their genes, separate two sets of twins when they are born. Two different sets of parents adopt the newborns — one, an affluent Bengaluru family, and one a circus company owner in Ooty. The scientist (Murali Sharma) decides that when the four men are 30, he will reveal the painful fact of their birth. For a man whose home is an orphanage, and who was once a boy who waited to be adopted but nobody did, the scientist is unbelievably stoic. His plans, of course, go haywire.

This is Shakespeare’s most adapted play, The Comedy of Errors. Joy and Roy (Ranveer Singh and Varun Sharma), Tweedledum and Tweedledee. All the confusion in Rohit Shetty’s new film Cirkus begins when the Bengaluru set of brothers reach Ooty on business and are continually mistaken for each other. The Comedy of Errors is a good-natured romp about two sets of identical twins. Its simple, clean comic trajectory is a great fit for broad-brush Bollywood. Forty years ago, Gulzar’s version of it, Angoor (1982), had Sanjeev Kumar in a lugubrious, long-suffering performance as two of them, with Deven Varma in another double role propelling the slapstick. More recently, Kenny Basumatary’s Local Kung Fu 2 (2013) was a action-packed guerrilla, indie take on the play, revolving around two sets of twins, one who are kung fu-proficient and one who aren’t.

This version, the big year-end Bollywood release with Singh and Sharma in double roles, is in the ribald, physical comedy space. Writers Yunus Sajawal, Sanchit Bedre, Vidhi Ghodgaonkar and Farhad Samji, and director Shetty set up the film’s tone from the first scene. The dialogues are largely run-of-the-mill, resting on overused comic tools like alliterations and double entendre — expect a few laugh-out-loud moments. Of course, enough suspension of disbelief is demanded. One of the Joys, who runs the circus company he inherits, is supposedly a marvel of science — he is insular to electric current, and his acts at the circus is based on it. There is no scientific explanation to the fact that every time he connects to wires, his twin, the other Joy, feels the shocks and goes into involuntary paroxysms, frightening and transmitting the currents to everyone who touches him at that time.

Jacqueline Fernandez plays Bindu, the daughter of a ditzy millionaire (Sanjay Mishra) with a fake, inconsistent “foreign-returned” accent. Johnny Lever and Siddharth Jadav, as goofball outlaws, up the hijinks. The ensemble cast, which also includes Sulabha Deshpande, Vrajesh Hirjee, Tiku Talsania, Anil Charanjjeet and Brijendra Kala, among others, are instruments to set up situations where mistaken identity fuel the plot further.

Singh’s ease with physical comedy is obvious, and he carries off both roles — both demanding, and both monotone — without any obvious comic flair. The women are ornamental, with safe clichés defining them. One is a best-selling author, but all she cares about is becoming a mother. The other is a Barbie, forever trapped between what her father wants and what her boyfriend does. Without these female prototypes, a Rohit Shetty bubble is incomplete. Technically, there’s nothing that stands out except sets that look expensive in their bubblegum exteriors and signposts.

Shetty and his writers are conscious to hammer in the film’s pro-adoption message: Bloodline is less important than how we bring up children. The sutradhar scientist, who, inexplicably land up at every turn of the plot, is constantly explaining the story to the audience. He is also the instrument for the noble message — the attempt to a Raj Kumar Hirani kind of messaging about a pan-India reality is jarring at best in the narrative scheme, although the intent is undoubtedly noble.

Cirkus is a film that feels familiar, even outdated. Its commitment to dumb down the dumbest of Shakespearean comedies is firm — and goofily celebratory.

Cirkus released in theatres on Friday.