Chaplin is back to entertain you.

Starring: Rudranil Ghosh, Soham, Mir, Rachita, Srijit Mukherji

Directed by: Anindo Banerjee

Mr Chaplin is back once again on screen. That’s always great news for cinegoers. Never mind if it is a Bengali version of Chaplin. Didn’t Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420 immortalise the tramp on Hindi screen in the ’50s? And what a stupendous success it was. The Bengali version, too, has all the ingredients of success.
Bangshi Das, a small-time entertainer, ekes out a living by doing Chaplin impersonations at birthday parties. He and his son, Nimua, live in a bustee, along with fellow ‘band party’ musicians and a miserly manager. The father and son have a great bonding between themselves and a magic ‘lingo’ of their own, a cocoon to retreat to, when in need of shutting out the harsh realities of this world.

At this time enters a beautiful damsel in their locality to set up a small school for deprived children. Nimua is one of her pupils. Nimua is so charming and lovable, she falls in love with him. She also recognises the raw talent of his father, Bangshi, and prevails upon her boyfriend, who’s directing a reality show to unearth comic talent in Bengal, to give Bangshi a chance to showcase his talent. Fittingly, Bangshi’s genius is recognised and he goes on to win the show. So, in a way it is also a rags-to-riches story.

This being the storyline, the success of the film hinges crucially on the two prime characters, Bangshi, and his son Nimua. This is where things start getting sticky. In the father and son relationship, drawn largely from Chaplin’s The Kid, Nimua comes up with a top-drawer performance. He is refreshingly natural, and is likely to steal the heart of Bengali movie-goers for years to come.But it is in the pivotal role of Chaplin that Rudranil, and with him the film, falls short of expectations. In all fairness to Rudra, Chaplin is a hard act to follow. The great stars of Chaplin’s silent era were all by-products of Vaudeville acts. They could sing, dance, do juggling acts, perform acrobatics and, above all, mime, like nobody’s business. While Rudra does a reasonably competent impersonation of Chaplin’s physical movements, he is found wanting in the crucial ‘comic acts’. In the film, while performing at a reality show, he’s supposed to lead a laugh riot. Unfortunately, it leaves his real-life audience largely unmoved. Not that he didn’t get his fair share of chances.However, the great comic situations in the movie, the ‘chair’ and the ‘mike’ scenes, are inadequately developed, and hence fail to generate laughter in the theatre.

The original Chaplin movies were successful because Chaplin’s ‘comic acts’ worked. Unfortunately, in the movie Chaplin, Rudra’s comic acts don’t. Also perhaps, it wasn’t necessary to make Bangshi such a simpleton. Whenever things happen around him, he has just one set expression on his face — that of non-comprehension.But there are other areas in Chaplin to gladden your heart. Music composed by Indraadip Dasgupta, for instance, is absolutely fantastic, including background effects. Soumik Halder’s cinematography is sensitive and handles indoor scenes, especially of the bustee sequences, with aplomb. Editing (by Bodhaditya Banerjee), too, is on a par with the film’s requirements. And Srijit Mukherji, of Autograph fame, is utterly convincing and natural as the director of the reality show because he doesn’t act, just lets himself be. The other new face in the movie, Rachita, as the heroine exudes charm and a lovable personality.