I had put a big blind bet on Teen Patti right after watching its first trailer. Gutsy and slick, it seemed like it’s going to be, for the lack of a better expression, a Trail. But director Leena Yadav deals some pretty sad cards here; so much so that I folded up, forfeited my bet and almost walked out of the theatre in the middle of the show. Amitabh Bachchan & Ben Kingsley are as important to this film as the joker cards often are to a deck of cards.
In brief, Teen Patti is the story of an unrecognised genius - a math professor played by Amitabh Bachchan, his colleague Madhavan and five of their students. Each one of them, driven by his/her own reasons, tries to cash-in on Bachchan’s latest discovery in the area of Probability - which of course finds a convenient application in the card game of Flash – leading to a sordid state of affairs. Making pots of cash playing at the illegal gambling dens in the Mumbai’s underworld, and the equally seedy overworld, the group descends fast and deep into the spiral of greed (and anger, jealousy, lust); emerging only to exorcise their personal ghosts and provide film with a rather absurd end.
Teen Patti, to be fair, is spun around an interesting premise. But branching into too many unruly offshoots, it fails to capitalise on the idea. It spreads itself thin and wide to accommodate the numerous star cameos. Characters saunter in and out of the film without any particular regard to the narrative. From fashion model Saira Mohan to Novelist Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi; they are all doing duties here. The basic plot in itself could have been a good and gripping film had the director chosen not to force insipid and inconsequential subplots into it.
Teen Patti is also anemic in terms of acting as far as the main cast is concerned. Yes, even in spite of two proven, time-tested, powerhouse performers and a legendary acting teacher. Bachchan is a study in ham here, given to talking to portraits of Newton and Einstein hung on the walls of his home. Kingsley’s role is limited to that of being a ‘facilitator of the flashback’. And Barry John is the mean dean of the institute Bachchan teaches in; such criminal wastage! Dhruv Ganesh (Bikram) and Siddharth Kher (Sid) do shine in places but Shraddha Kapoor (Apu), who if I’m not mistaken is the daughter of Shakti Kapoor, left me cringing in my seat. Tinu Anand, Mahesh Manjrekar and the rest of the rogue brigade, though, turn in short and nice performances.
On to what I liked about the film; the scale of the production (some 80 sets were created for the film), sequences where Sid and Apu play Bonny and Clyde, and where Bikram is trying to escape the gaze of multitude of cameras, and of course the unabashedly raunchy ‘item number’. Clearly ‘The Gaze’ is not the property of one gender!
What didn’t click; incoherent script and gaping holes in the plot, stupid dialogue translated into even more ridiculous subtitles (am I the only one who’s seen the subtitled print?) and, I dare say, lack of directorial touch.
It’s substandard fare with all the trappings of a big budget Bollywood production. It’s trying to masquerade around as a clever and different film. It’s neither.
Buy a lottery ticket or bet on a race instead of buying tickets for this film. Who knows? It just might be a good day.
Or, if your weekend is incomplete till you watch a film, rent Shakti Samanta’s The Great Gambler, or Isabel Coixet’s Elegy or even Robert Luketic’s 21. Between these three you’ll have your fill of Bachchan, Kingsley and Teen Patti.
Source: http://dearcinema.com/review/review-teen-patti
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