A crash course on commodity market!

Sensex is the seventh sense of Gujaratis. But we haven’t had a Gujarati film dedicated to our love for the stock market so far. This new urban Gujarati film ‘Hu TuTuTu – Aavi Ramat Ni Rutu’ is perhaps the first film on the backdrop of the commodity market. It breaks monotony of mindless, double meaning comedies and presents complete family drama. Moreover, we have got a talented female film director as Shital Shah as well.

Pawn Stars

Choksi & Choksi brothers (Abhay Chandarana and Ankit Joshipura) are commodity kings of Ahmedabad. With God-like attitude, they think they can make or break anybody with proper atmosphere and power of money. One day over a game of chess, a bet is placed between both brothers. The bet is to swap the Queen (or wazir) with a pawn. The Queen is their talented Harvard return Managing Director Uday Gandhi (Parth Oza). And the pawn is a small-time petty thief Guru (Raunaq Kamdar). They literally bring Uday on the road using their proven dirty tricks. On the other hand, they handpick Guru and after some personality makeover, they make him MD of their company. So, the bet is over.

But not the game. These pawns launch full blown attack on their masters with the help of two beautiful ladies, a struggling actress Sheela (Shital Shah, also the director of the film) and a personality grooming expert Aishwarya (Shaina Shah). Will they succeed?

Snail Gaadi

The very first thing you notice about this film is its title. It’s taken from the classic catchy Gujarati rap song which was originally composed by father-son duo Avinash & Gaurang Vyas. The song has been recreated and used very effectively. Parthiv Gohil’s rock solid voice gives the song much needed power. The song sets pace throughout the movie. But unfortunately, no credits to its original composers were visible in their title credits.

The director takes too much time to demonstrate the lavish lifestyle of Choksi brothers. They roam in luxury cars, go to a club, play snooker-chess, but all at the cost of the pace of the movie. The movie keeps progressing at the snail speed in the first hour. Had they edited a few scenes more sharply, this 139 odd minutes long movie could have been a nice thriller-revenge story like ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla.’

Apart from slow speed, a few more things hampered the otherwise nice movie. Like, some incidents and characters are very clichéd as well as over simplistic. Like, protagonist’s overnight transformation from riches to rags. It’s hard to believe that Harvard educated man literally becomes penniless in just one night. The director couldn’t establish chemistry between both the lead pairs. A scope of nice love story got ruined by the time wasted pre-interval plot setting. Thus, it becomes hard to digest that why a personality grooming expert and an actress involve in revenge saga of two unknown youngsters. Laziness in storytelling snatched a chance to show opportunistic friends or relatives and worthlessness of money. Goon, thief, policeman, white collar executive, struggling actress, girlfriend… all looks caricaturish. They look far from reality and don’t have any layers in their personalities.

One can’t help but find shadows of some of the iconic movie sequences here. Like, grooming scenes of roadside goon reminds you of Gujarati film ‘Santu Rangili’ and Amitabh Bachchan starer ‘Yarana’. Manmohan Desai’s ‘Parvarish’ had asked a question, what makes a man what he becomes, birth or upbringing? The bet in ‘Hu TuTuTu’ between two brothers has the same question. But the point couldn’t be proven. Dialogue delivery style of Shital Shah’s character reminds of Deepika Padukone from ‘Happy New Year’, which completely falls flat. This film seriously lacks some hard hitting catchy punchlines, too. Many scenes only serve a purpose to be an advertisement of film’s apparel sponsor.

Our new age Gujarati films have completely ditched title credits in Gujarati script, including this one. The problem of broken language remains in ‘Hu TuTu Tu.’ Except Raunak’s character, no one has natural Gujarati dialect. What we hear is almost bookish language. We can clearly hear ‘pulis’ instead of ‘police’, ‘dagabaaz’ instead of Gujarati ‘dagabaaj’. Such minute things create a barrier between characters and audience. Strangely, one small character has heavy foreign accent for no obvious reason!English subtitles are nice attempt to reach to global audience.

Silver Lining

In spite of all the imperfections, ‘Hu TuTuTu’ has its heart in its place. You can’t hate this movie for sure. It has nice production values. Both the leading men look cute. Especially, Raunaq Kamdar has very good comic timing. The leading lady Shital Shah has great screen presence. Hope she continues to wear director’s cap. Both Choksis looks perfect Sheth material.Ex-newscaster Hridaynath Gharekhan has small but likable cameo.

Buy it!

‘Hu TuTuTu’ is not a great film, but it’s neither unwatchable. You can certainly give it a try with your family. You may learn basics of commodity trading if not get entertained!

Rating: **1/2 (Two and a half stars)