Fun, frolic pack punch

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Lafangey Parindey (LP) is a love story that has lots going on with and around it. It starts off as a film about two driven and dogged individuals and for a while plays out in that very-Hollywood Rocky/Flashdance genre where impossible is nothing. Yet at heart, Lafangey Parindey is a softie. Warm, decent, wholesome and in love. Very House of Yash & Adi Chopra.
But director Pradeep Sarkar’s lafangey parindey don’t reside near the tulip gardens of Holland or in the mustard fields of Punjab. They live in a grimy, congested colony of Mumbai, speak tapori language and strike satkela poses in grungy Big Bazaar clothes.
We begin in Mumbai, circa 2010, in a boxing ring in the bowels of satta king Usman Bhai’s (Piyush Mishra) big, bad empire. Nandan Kamthekar (Neil Nitin Mukesh) is Usman’s prized bare-knuckled boxer. He boxes blindfolded and with one punch knocks out his opponents. Always. Nandan, hence, is One-Shot Nandu.
Though we don’t visit his home, we know that Nandu lives on a street where boys play carom and genial old chaiwallas serve hot tea and rusk on credit. In this colony lives Pinky Palkar (Deepika Padukone), with her mother and useless brother. Pinky, spunky and cheery, dreams of getting out of this colony, this life. And this she plans to do by dancing on skates at India’s Got Talent. Though locality boys and Nandu’s friends — Chaddi, Gulkand and Diesel — tease her and call her Dance Bar, she continues practising, dreaming.  
So he is Rocky Balboa, she is Alex Owens. Or, if you prefer, he is Billy Flynn (The Champ) and she is Billy Elliot. If only…
We catch glimpses of Pinky on skates in installments — sometimes torso, sometimes legs, never a full-length preview.
Anyway, one night Usman calls Nandu, hands him a gun and sends him off with Anna (Kay Kay Menon). Bullets fly, Nandu crashes into someone, and next morning cops find Anna dead at the steering wheel.
Pinky, meanwhile, loses her eyesight. And because watching her trip and fall hurts him, Nandu says he will teach her to see. Blindfolded boxer, remember? Pinky is sceptical, but agrees. Nandu takes her to a warehouse where lessons involve dunking head in water, chucking atta balls at ringing bells and dodging smelly fish. Nandu’s three friends join these classes for some silly banter and masti. Pinky learns quick, and asks Nandu to learn to dance on skates and enter India’s Got Talent with her. Reluctant at first, he agrees. Back to the classroom. This time Nandu slips, gets stuck in involuntary splits and gives everybody the tickles.
Dancing begets feelings, feelings beget meddling from Usman Bhai and cops, but love in the end…
Lafangey Parindey is predicable but it keeps us interested because of the new route this love story takes and the company it keeps. There’s more fun and frolic on this journey than I expected, and most of it is thanks to Gopi Puthran’s screenplay and dialogues, and of course high-calibre actors. Nandu’s three luchcha friends have some lovely spontaneous moments and lines.
Though the film’s story skips and jumps — for example, Usman Bhai, who is presented as a man of consequence, slinks out in the end, without causing a ripple — there’s lightness to the storytelling which involves a blind heroine.
Pradeep Sarkar’s LP has a warm, glowing heart and is at its best when flirting and laughing. But it is short on talent and finesse and doesn’t fully involve us in the action and dancing that it is so keen on. The weakest part of the film is the one about pursuing dreams — here both Neil and Deepika are underwhelming. 
Though we first meet Neil’s Nandu in the ring, bleeding and concentrating, and listen to his gruff voice telling us about mard and dard, in the rest of the film he rushes in and out of the ring as if boxing were a freelance job he must get over with, one knockout punch per visit.  
Deepika’s skating, though helped by the use of a body double and clever camera shots, is very obviously fake — I kept imagining her on a ramp with wheels, being pushed and pulled around by spot boys. The film’s India’s Got Talent finale is also incredibly shoddy.
But thankfully, Neil smooching Deepika distracts and makes us happy in the end.
Though Neil’s ring-time lacks tension and pace, and Deepika’s dancing is soulless, both are good otherwise. Blind Deepika is very moving and you begin to care for her. Neil’s performance is nuanced and he gives his character more shades and feelings that perhaps even the writer intended. He is intense and has a high cute quotient. The film’s grunge-rock musical score is fun, but Ne-il’s I’m-a-little-teapot style of dancing is awful.