Yes I know…I can hear the sound of heartbreak. In our cricket crazed nation,
a movie on Dhoni cannot go wrong and I am probably incurring the wrath of a
billion fans by a review title like that – but the truth, no matter how bitter,
must be told - since the movie does go wrong and on so many levels that I
can find no reason to suggest you waste your money and time (at an excruciating
3 hours) even though it celebrates the life of such a cricketing icon.
While its called ‘The Untold Story’ there isn’t much of a story to tell. The
trailer, with its slick presentation, raised expectations significantly but in
its attempt to engage, ended up giving all that the movie has to offer as well.
If you can quell the curiosity, just watch the trailer of the movie and tick MS
Dhoni off your list. There needs to be something significant and dramatic in the
life of the protagonist for you to build connect with any story – something that
jolts you and grabs your attention. Dhoni’s life may well have those moments –
but the movie doesn’t.
The start is captivating and powerful – for the first 3 minutes. The moment
you get thrown back to the birth of it all, is where the boredom starts. There
is nothing interesting or engaging about the ‘journey’ and while the background
score and lingering visuals suggest otherwise, nothing holds your attention and
you wonder why the director is taking so much time to arrive at the point,
assuming that there even is one.
Neeraj Pandey has given us one of the finest offerings in Bollywood cinema
with A Wednesday. He followed it up with the pretty special ‘Special 26’ as
well. It was with Baby (the forced India version of Argo) that the cracks began
to show. However, with MS Dhoni he sinks to new lows that are surprising for a
director of his calibre. If there wasn’t much to tell, you’d expect he would
make it snappy and slick, throttling from childhood to the rising star to the
super icon status Dhoni holds today.
Instead, he chooses to be the ‘fan’ – showing us uninteresting and
unimportant things with a fervor suggestive of it being pivotal to the story he
wants to tell. Mr. Pandey is convinced that since its Dhoni, everything will
catch our fancy. And so, we are forced to sit through – Dhoni the batting star
who everybody wants to watch, pretty much since childhood; the father who seemed
unreasonable in the trailer but actually is pretty reasonable as the story
progresses; shot after shot being hit by Dhoni till every stroke starts getting
rammed into your skull and make you grimace instead of applauding – I can go on
about these and believe me, I am just getting warmed up.
The only person I really feel sorry for in this entire waste of 3 hours, is
Sushant Singh Rajput. Why it had to be Rajput who looks nothing like MSD, I’ll
never know. However, once entrusted the role, he gives it his all – from Dhoni’s
mannerisms, to his batting stance to even his accent – Sushant Singh Rajput
adopts it all with ease and comfort and despite the lack of a story – makes
Dhoni his own. His super-imposition into the shining moments of Dhoni’s career
are also pretty effectively done, though the CGI is obvious. Neeraj Pandey’s
trademark attention to detail is also staggeringly obvious – whether it’s the
transition of mobile phones across the years, to the logos of airlines and their
changes – this time though, its plain he’s just showing off rather than telling
an engaging story.
Cut down to 90 minutes and focusing more on the little moments that make
Dhoni – well, Dhoni – would’ve been a great tribute to the naturally talented
and driven leader for Indian cricket and superstar icon of today’s youth. As it
stands though, MS Dhoni – The Untold Story is a fanboy rendition of the life and
times of the cricketer, that missed being edited.
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