Shortkut-The Con is On
Cast: Akshay Khanna, Arshad Warsi, Amrita Rao
Direction: Neeraj Vora
Short Kut, which is a remake of the Malayalam film Udayananu Tharam. ‘The Con Is On’, is a straight lift from the Steve Martin-Eddie Murphy film Bowfinger, which had a similar storyline as well. So, nothing about the movie is original, but it is not something that you have seen recently on the big screen as well. The story, although copied, or, to say, inspired, is not what you would take it to be from the trailers. Rajesh Kumar, played by Arshad Warsi, is a struggling actor in Mumbai who thinks he is better than every one else gets kicked out by all production houses and starts living with Shekhar(Akshay Khanna), a writer-director who has just finished writing his first script. Arshad Warsi steals the script and sells it to a producer, condition being that he would be the hero in that movie. Akshay Khanna is devastated by this act of perfidy, and add to this, superstar movie actor Mansi, played by Amrita Rao, pushes herself on him and gets married to him, and Akshay is written off as a megastars’ husband using her for his success.
After this, which happens to be an interesting turn of events in the movie, and for the first time in 1 hour makes you wonder what will happen next, the screenplay is not up to the mark, and what started as a refreshing movie, turns out to be the same old rona dhona, emotional atyachaar, and useless songs stuffed in with no relation to the story-line. The director tries to explain throughout the movie that there are no shortcuts in life, but the film does not hold after a while, and that leaves you bored.
Amrita Rao looks sizzling and striking in all the songs. That is one plus point there. But, other than that, the film does not score well with the audiences.
In a nutshell, a movie with a good script, and good actors, but bad screenplay which just leaves it unmoving or entertaining.
