Shashanka Ghosh’s Freddy, streaming on Disney+ Hotstar from December 2, is almost entirely a Kartik Aaryan film. Aaryan plays the protagonist Freddy Ginwala in this revenge saga-meets-slasher films. The other characters are there just to further the plot. So, not a fun screenplay to begin with, but can the bad boy persona of Aaryan internalise and channel a twisted, lonely Parsi dentist who can’t open his mouth in front of women and also can’t help but peer down their necks when he meets one? On the surface, he can.
Freddy runs a thriving dentistry practice and lives along with his pet tortoise Hardy (them together make for some "awww" moments) in prime Mumbai real-estate — a mansion he has inherited from his parents who are no more. He also has a sprawling farmhouse in the city’s outskirts where, when he visits, he does free dental check-ups of villagers. His only confidante is an aunt who has taken care of him after he became an orphan. When he meets Kainaz (Alaya F), his fortunes with women seem to open up. Kainaz is in a bad marriage — she meets him with bruises inflicted by her abusive husband Rustom (Sajjad Delafrooz). Dr Ginwala falls for Kainaz, and the story springboards into a gory climax after a twist in the plot, and another character, Raymond (Karan Pandit), is introduced, who has a terrible Parsi-English accent and who has reptilian tendency of slithering his face all over his girlfriend.
Aaryan is all tics, stolen glances, droops and half-smiles. And he can do a lot more once provoked. In the way he has embodied Freddy’s character, the physicality is pat. But that’s where the character’s appeal ends. With a backstory from his childhood that’s as cloying as it is convenient, Aaryan doesn’t have much material to really get under the character’s skin. Parveez Shaikh’s screenplay is invested only in how best Aaryan could get the opportunity to play freak — how and why he became one is a matter of one flashback scene. So, with all the quirks and the physical mannerisms, Aaryan’s character is bereft of layers which the audience can see unravel. Freddy is left being just a creep with a penchant for bloodshed and extraction.
Alaya F is on the ball, but with dialogues (Aseem Arora) that seem tailor-made only to propel the story instead of revealing Kainaz’s character, she comes across just as prime fodder for Dr Ginwala to turn soft-spoken hell-raiser. The basic graph is interesting — from a purple-bruised wife to a woman in pursuit of her second life.
That’s the problem with the entire film. It is a Kartik Aaryan showcase. The rest of the film exists as reasons we should sympathise with the dentist hero (or anti-hero? The screenplay isn’t clear about it) who loves cleavages and faloodas. What a downer, because the film began with a lot of promise.
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