Rohit Shetty’s Cirkus has a big cast that includes Ranveer Singh, Pooja Hegde, Jacqueline Fernandez, Varun Sharma, and many other comedy actors that are loved by audiences, but the show doesn’t do justice to the names. William Shakespeare made “The Comedy of Errors” in the 16th century and gave the world an immortal formula for crazy entertainment. Bollywood has made “Ram Aur Shyam,” “Seeta Aur Geeta,” “Judwaa,” and countless other films on the same formula of twins. The legendary writer Gulzar made “Angoor” on a very small budget and with a not-so-famous cast compared to others and showed them that good content cannot be bought with money. That vision and storytelling cannot be bought, copied, or remade. You have to have it in yourself. Rohit Shetty, who has the most 100-crore grossers for any Bollywood director, was so busy with money spinners that he didn’t pay attention to this thing. Cirkus has lavish sets, a big scale, a huge cast, and a big director, but all that goes to waste because it has a tiny content. From writing, screenwriting, performances, music, and direction. It is not an dissoppintment but it is neither what we were expecting it to be.
Cirkus is adapted from Angoor but set against a different backdrop. It revolves around a funny doctor’s experiment in which two pairs of twin brothers can live separately, with one of them staying with the other. Roy (Ranveer Singh) and Joy (Varun Sharma) are adopted by a rich family in Bengaluru, while the other pair is adopted by a middle-class family and have a circus of their own in Ooty. What happens when one pair of Joy and Roy travel to the town of the other pair is all you get to see in Cirkus. It involves a lot of misunderstandings, relationships, robberies, electric current, and chaos. One of our Roys is married, while the other is about to be married. Naturally, the misunderstanding implicates their love interests too.
The storyline goes like this:
Two sets of identical twins are accidentally separated at birth. Several years later, when they are coincidentally in the same town, there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding when people mistake them for each other.
Dr Roy is working on a theory that in future non biological relations could be much bigger then blood relations he runs the Jamnadas orphanage with his brother Joy.Once two different pair of identical twins are left at the orphanage and are soon to be adopted by different families to prove his theory Dr Roy swipes the either twin with other.One pair of twins gets adopted by a couple in Ooty running a Cirkus another pair gets adopted by a wealthy family of Shakuntala Devi in Bangalore and both families name the twins as Roy and Joy.While Dr Roy decides to keep a track on both families so that both the twins don’t cross path one of the twin of Roy is god gifted where he can pass electric current true his body while doing the same the other twin Roy faces it impact.Years later after death of his father Roy decides to run his fathers circus with Joy and use his powers to entertain people while he is married to Mala. While the other Roy lives wealthy life in Bangalore with Joy and feels the impact of electric powers often and in love with Bindu. But confusion arrives when both the twins arrive in the same city leading to confusion and comedy of errors
Moreover, Cirkus is a high-scale production with good support from the technical team. Current Laga is the only saving grace in the music album, and wouldn’t you love Deepika’s wild dance steps? The cinematography is neat, the background score keeps you busy, and the locations and sets are eye-pleasing, though some of them look fake and banal. The VFX work didn’t provide details on the final output. Cirkus’ dialogues might just go down in history books as one of the worst written dialogues for a Rohit Shetty film.
“Main wafadaar hu, Maine aapka Kela khaya hai,” “Itte-cock se hua,” and “Municipality” will annoy you. How can Rohit expect us to hear these double-meaning jokes with our families in cinemas? Where are those clean family films by him? Every single laugh is forceful and inessential. What’s wrong with Rohit that he got to this level? I never expected this. Yes, I know he’s not making those high-repeat value films like “Golmaal: Fun Unlimited” and “Singham” nowadays, but he was doing fine with those decent entertainments that can be least watched at once.
I agree, Bollywood has gone wrong in 2022 and has not made good comedies for over a decade, but nobody expected this kind of fall. Cirkus is a king-sized disheartenment. Who’d expected the last Bollywood release of the year to be so bad and tortuous? At least, not me. The pandemic has affected our lives, and so have filmmakers too. It is clearly visible from the products they have made post pandemic. I hope he roars back with Singham and Golmaal Again.