‘I See You’ leaves you bored

Film: “I See You”; Cast: Arjun Rampal, Vipasha, Chunky Pandey, Kirron Kher; Director: Vivek Aggarwal; Rating: * Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan flit across the screen during the credit titles of “I See You”. They were being kind.

Dress designer Manish Malhotra has the easiest job in this quaint but dead film about a comatose girl whose spirit visits a talk-show host’s swanky pad in London. The ghost, played by newcomer Vipasha, looks quite bored in the film.

The cleverest thing about Suresh Nair’s script is the talk-show title ‘British Raj’. You see, Raj is our hero Arjun Rampal’s name. Clever, clever!

It’s a name much in favour in our films. Remember Shah Rukh Khan in “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge”? Similarly, “I See You” too is set in London.

Cinematographer Ashok Mehta shoots London with a mix of touristic delight and resident ennui. Music composers Vishal-Shekhar have come up with a good score that provide a welcome intrusion.

Somewhere between the two extremes of delight and boredom reside the core of this failed but sweet love story between a womaniser and a ghost.

Arjun Rampal is an actor capable of charisma on screen. As producer, he offers himself a plum chance but unfortunately manages to leave audiences glum. A deathly stillness occupies the heart of the plot. And if you have watched the Hollywood film “Just Like Heaven” you know where this Hindi version has come from.

Most of the film is set in the hero Raj’s apartment, far prettier than Vipasha, who plays the ghost with unnerving calmness. Scenes between Rampal and the debutante are absolutely zero in chemistry. Seldom have we come across a pair so devoid of a romantic link.

The fringe players, mainly derived from the original Hollywood film, include a corrupt doctor who sells organs, a British cop who’s so obsessed with Hindi films, the comatose girl’s mom who darts dirty looks at Raj, a talk-show co-hostess who shows off her legs so much that you wonder if she’s advertising for strip poker, and last but not the least, the hero’s friend who gets beaten up by his wife every night.

Only god knows what the husband-beating wife wants from her husband … or why this film was made in the first place! An exercise in supreme self-indulgence, “I See You” tells us nothing about London, near-fatal illnesses and self-obsessed talk-show hosts that we really wish to know.

One can’t think any really good reason to see “I See You”.

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