A Ferrari of a fraud

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We have come to expect elevating experience when Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rajkumar Hirani & Friends invite us for a film. Some of our outings with them have been practically levitating (Lage Raho Munna Bhai for me), and others incredibly memorable (Munna Bhai MBBS and 3 Idiots).

So to accuse them of duplicity, even guile, will sound churlish. But that’s what Ferrari Ki Sawaari is. It is a fraud. Seemingly benign, even idealistic and gooey, it’s actually a hard-hearted, exploitative film that uses two of the three things most dear to Indians — fathers and Sachin Tendulkar — to hawk a very expensive car and foreign cricket coaching clubs.
But because this film has been put together by immensely smart guys, many with advertising background, including the film’s director Rajesh Mapuskar and his friend and dialogue writer Raju Hirani, they have wrapped their merchandise in so many touching emotions and tear-jerker scenes, and placed it all in such a sweet and quaint world that it’s easy to miss the underlying intent.
I actually cried for a good part of the first half, but woke up to the scam in the second half and then got progressively angry.

In a fairytale setting in Mumbai, i.e. a charming Parsi housing colony, lives a family of three men: the eldest is Behram Deboo (Boman Irani), his widowed son Rustom (Sharman Joshi) and his son Kayo (Ritvik Sahore). The third dearest desi thing, Ma, is dead and her absence is used to up the general poignancy in the house.
Rustom is a dutiful son and father, and a model citizen. Head clerk at Worli RTO, he owns an old scooter and earns just enough to take care of his growing son’s needs. Kayo, a very talented young cricketer, is a dream son.
Rustom’s own father, Behram, is a grumpy old man who watches TV all day, keeps a hand mirror to spy on what’s going on behind his back and often shouts at Rustom. Kayo doesn’t like this unkempt man and has no relationship with him. We later learn that Behram, still the youngest-ever Ranji player, was cheated of his chance to play for India by a friend.
The first half of the film is focused on the relationship between Rustom and Kayo. Rustom wants to be a good role model to Kayo. So when he jumps a red light, he chases a traffic cop to pay the challan.
Kayo is the captain of his club’s team and is almost impossible to get out. But he does get out, that too in a crucial match, when his shoe sole comes off and trips him. Just a day before he had broken his bat and Rustom had somehow put together money to buy a new one.
Kayo is passionate about cricket and Rustom believes that Kayo, given good gear and training, will make it to the Indian team. The fact that he often doesn’t have money is the bond that holds sad father and his sensitive son together.
But when the coach of Britain’s MCG Coaching Camp comes to Kayo’s club and says that he will be taking an under-14 team for coaching at Lord’s, “where they could face Shane Warne or bowl to Sachin”, Rustom perks up. But when he hears that it’ll cost Rs 1.5 lakh, he wilts. But only for a bit.
While Rustom is running around for a loan from his own EPF account (which, he is told, will take a long time), and chasing bank executives who smirk at his pay slip, he meets Baboo Didi (Seema Pahwa), a wedding planner. She needs to rent a Ferrari for the baraat of the son of a corporator (Vijay Nikam), and she’ll, of course, pay Rs 1.5 lakh.
Only Sachin Tendulkar, Rustom tells her, has a Ferrari in Mumbai, and so begins the attempt to steal and then return the car.

This is also where the film’s problems begin. The makers of Ferrari Ki Sawaari are completely oblivious to the irony that at the core of their story lie two falsehoods. Their story revolves around Sachin Tendulkar’s red Ferrari, the one he received in 2002 from F1 champion Michael Schumacher as a gift from Ferrari on equalling Don Bradman’s feat of 29 Test centuries. Last year, Tendulkar sold this gift, a 360 Modena Ferrari, to a Surat-based businessman for, according to a news report, Rs 1.5 crore.
The film doesn’t take this unsavoury fact into account. Instead, it makes us worry about Sachin’s car as Rustom and others drive it around Mumbai. What’s really yucky is the extended Ferrari advertisement, complete with a song.
Also, till now the film had been somewhat disapproving of how commercial the game of cricket has become. It spoke of talent nurtured at Shivaji Park, tells indulgent parents to get a grip, and after talking about recession-driven sports tourism — holiday packages from foreign sporting clubs that feed on a cricket-crazy nation’s passion — the film takes a U-turn. It sends around a thela to collect money and then pays Rs 1.5 lakh so that Kayo can walk to the haloed grounds of the Lord’s with a poor Sachin double in tow.
What works for Ferrari Ki Sawaari is its supremely talented ensemble of actors — Sharman Joshi’s emotions leap through the screen and touch you, and Boman Irani acts with every twisted part of his body. Little Ritvik Sahore is adorable and Seema Pahwa is a riot. Of the other characters, Vijay Nikam is very, very good.
The film’s script is clever and distracts us with a cute skit about how stolen cars are dismembered and the funny politics of samuhic vivah, but then it throws in an utterly forgettable item number by Vidya Balan, just in case you were itching for a jiggling behind. I wasn’t.