The cast and the music had a magnetic effect on me. But once the film reel began rolling, I was experiencing symptoms of depression and schizophrenia.
Roy starts and ends on one single note: blankness. While I am still trying to figure out what the writer intended by conveying such a senseless story, I have not yet recovered from the trauma I had after sitting through two and a half hours of nothingness. Vikramjit Singh's characters are pretentiously polished: Arjun Rampal as an arrogant writer and director who uses a typewriter, Jacqueline Fernandez as a book-loving, reserved filmmaker, and Ranbir Kapoor as a (mute) thief who drives around in a convertible, you know, for the effect. Yes, Kapoor has a total of fifteen dialogs (including "Ooh," "Aah," and "Aao") in the film. (Also, if you observe, the beginning credits introduces Kapoor to be in a "dynamic role." What does the director mean by this? If ever I meet the amateur Vikramjit Singh in a coffee house, I'll make sure that I ask him this question and write a piece about it verbatim.)
The thief in the film introduces himself as a thief so that we don't misconstrue the makers as thieves for robbing us off through the ticket costs. This happens in less than twenty minutes into it, and I did not need any more proof to consider how bad the film was gonna be. Even if I forgo the snail-paced narration, I cannot forgive Singh for botching up the screenplay. It has the worst screenplay I have seen all this year, and it is a good thing from a Bollywood point of view. The story constructed is so choppy, I bet you will turn to your therapist after watching it.
Bad cinematography and good photography mix together and bring out blues in the exotic locales the film has been shot in. The dialogs are plain bad, and so is the cast performance. Only Rampal comes out as an average player.
If you want me to tell it, then, yes, the music and songs are good. Period. But the score is repetitive, often sampling many of the songs' melodies. I bet most of us have seen the best parts of the movie in the trailer, and if you were to divide Roy, as a film, into two parts: one as the trailer, and one as the film intrinsically, you would have two polarizing videos.
BOTTOM LINE: There is not an iota of thrill in the storyline, nor is the story fathomable. Roy only looks good in the trailer, and for a moment there, I even thought the whole film was a tediously long advertisement for Godrej lockers and CCTV cameras. Regretlessly Avoidable!
Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YES
