Delhi Belly – Mediocrity at its best

Not every day affair this when a movie shocks, surprises and disappoints all in a span of 100 odd minutes. But, this movie did that and how!

Delhi Belly is a common term for what wikipedia calls as ‘Traveler's diarrhea’. So, one of our main characters Kunal Roy Kapoor, a photo journalist is suffering from this condition. His roommates are Vir Das, a cartoonist and Imran Khan, a journalist. The basic plot involves these 3 guys getting intertwined with a local gang chasing an item that contains diamonds worth crores. The trio gets stuck in a deep mess and the story is about how they manage to find their way out of it.

The story is not fresh but the treatment is. A real highlight of this movie is the free flowing profanity filled dialogue. I don’t remember a mainstream movie that could boast of such dialogues. This will make many people identify the characters as real and few others may think that it is overdone.

So, is this movie worthy enough to be given cult status? Not quite. I didn’t really find the basic plot gripping enough. The humour was inconsistent and wasn’t really laugh inducing in many of the places. But, I must say that those patches with good humour are really good. Few sequences are hilarious like the opening ones and the one where the burkha clad trio visits the jeweler to get their stuff back.

I still can’t get convinced about Imran’s acting. He has the meatiest role but fails to impress when compared to the other two lead characters. Vir Das and Kunal Roy Kapoor would have really made most out of better roles. They still do a brilliant job at what they have been asked to do.

Apart from these two, its Vijay Raaz and Poorna Jagannathan who impress the most. Vijay Raaz should get more roles of these types and directors should stop wasting his talent in mindless movies. Poorna is fresh and she should now shift base to Mumbai from Hollywood as she is sure to get more offers after this performance.

Why on earth was Shenaz Treasury(wala ?!) needed in the plot ? That whole sub plot of Imran getting engaged to Shenaz was the most boring part of the movie and could have been handled differently. Also, Vir Das’s love story was under cooked. That could have been given 10-15 minutes more and for sure it wouldn’t have been bad.

The songs have been used fairly well. Its good to see that there are no forced song sequences though more than couple of songs had caught up well with the audience. These songs are used in the background and go well with the narrative.

I think the ploy of using too much of profanity has worked for the makers. I noticed that the audience enjoyed seeing the main characters foul mouthing so much. But, the movie should have had more to it than just the shock/surprise inducing dialogues.

I wouldn't be surprised if this movie is considered one of the better movies this year.But, it would make me cringe if its mentioned in the same breath as 'Stanley Ka Dabba' and 'Dhobi Ghat'. This movie is more of a marketing triumph for Aamir Khan than a hit based on its content. So, that’s how it should be treated.

All in all, it is an average movie with few good sequences and over the top profanity through out. Different than most of the other movies these days but not really better.