Film Review | Ferrari ki Sawaari

Too many extras

Sachin, Sachin’s Ferrari, Sachin’s house, a boy’s dream to play like Sachin, a dad’s desperate attempt to make that dream come true, an ageing, former Ranji Trophy player’s sore wound... Cricket is this film’s raison d’etre. If cricket worship bores and baffles you like it does this reviewer, Rajesh Mapuskar’s Ferrari ki Saawari may be daunting. To cricket, add a good man -- or what we call an “honest” man, a “Gandhi”, because dishonesty is considered the rule -- and his battle against a cricket establishment, and a boy’s chance to play for India, and you almost have a mother of an emotion-wresting cocktail. Ferrari ki Saawari is a crowd-pleaser.

Sharman Joshi plays Rusy, a government clerk, who checks into a Mumbai police post to pay a fine because he has broken a traffic rule. He lives with his ageing father (Boman Irani), an embittered former Ranji player who nurses an old wound from his cricketing days and believes in the old, accepted truth that the Indian cricket establishment is not meritocratic, and his son Kayo (Ritvik Sahore), who is a budding talent in the sport and dreams of playing like the country’s god, Sachin Tendulkar. Kayo has a plum opportunity to play in the temple of cricket, which sets the comedy rolling. Rusy has to steal a Ferrari, invite the ire of a slumlord’s son and almost get shot. A host of secondary characters populate the canvas, most of them with a quirk or an obsession. Refreshingly enough, being Parsi, although important in the story, is not meant for comic relief.

Irani’s essaying of the grey-haired, frail Behram Deboo is confident and convincing. Few other Indian actors can master the physicality of a role better than Irani can. The Parsi milieu is his home ground, as we would remember from films such as Little Zizou, and unforgettably from Rahul Da Cunha’s play I am not Bajirao, but as the disgruntled, wronged man who transforms after watching his grandson play, Irani lends pathos, humour as well as anger to Deboo. It ought be one of his memorable performances. In the pivotal role Joshi is sorely laboured, weeping almost through the whole film. Despite the innocence and charm of the character, Joshi makes him a soft-spoken, soppy ham. Sahore is a natural, as the film’s little hero; he warmed my heart. There are some accomplished cameos including those by Seema Pahwa and Paresh Rawal.

Cinematography and editing add little to the experience of watching Ferrari ki Sawaari. Most of the film looks like a mediocre commercial, and it runs into more than two hours, overstretched by big dollops of weepy mush. Songs and the background score hammer in the emotions -- a song punctuates almost every crucial turn in the film.

Ferrari ki Sawaari has heart, a time-tested premise and some good performances. It tries hard to tow the formula, and yet it’s worth a watch if you can ignore the time-consuming excess.

Ferrari ki Sawaari released in theatres on Friday.