Luck By Chance movie rating-review

Luck By Chance (2009) movie poster :















Luck By Chance (2009) Movie Rating and Review :

Rating :

Acting – 9/10
Direction – 7/10
Screenplay – 7/10
Music – 5/10
Technique – 7/10

Review :

Struggler as star

Zoya Akhtar’s directional debut Luck By Chance is a tour de force – a pitiless look at the film industry but great fun too!

Koi alag sa script likhta hai... Koi star film nahin karta hai... Aise hi toh outsiders ko film industry mein chance milta hai...

These lines from Yash Johar’s son Karan Johar to Rakesh Roshan’s son Hrithik Roshan in Javed Akhtar’s daughter Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance hit you straight as an arrow, but their self-referential irony makes you wonder if the toasts of tinseltown did not flinch saying them.

Karan goes on to tell Hrithik — who doesn’t play himself but a similar superstar called Zaffar Khan — that both Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan became who they are because the stars of the time turned down Darr and Zanjeer.

So is the insane cocktail — that’s how SRK describes stardom in the film — just “luck by chance”? Or is it what Farhan’s Vikram says in the film — you choose your destiny, destiny doesn’t choose you. Zoya’s directorial debut is a collision of these two forces at play and she leaves it to you to find the path that works.

Farhan’s Vikram Jai Singh and Konkona’s Sona Mishra have chosen their paths. Both are struggling actors. He is from Delhi and after a crash course in acting (and dancing and fighting and horseriding) is ready to play along the rules of the Bollywood game. She has done a couple of Bhojpuri films and C-grade fare like Teer Aur Talwar and is convinced that the producer she is sleeping with will give her the big break.

Things don’t go as planned and luck intervenes, bad for one, good for the other. One life changes overnight into success while the other plunges into further despair. He becomes a superstar by chance, she stays an actor by choice.

Madhur Bhandarkar meets Farah Khan in Zoya Akhtar’s first effort. As with Bhandarkar there is an attempt to give the audiences an insider’s view of the ideologies and idiosyncracies of an industry. And as with Farah, there is a liberal sprinkling of inside jokes but never at the cost of the plot.

But Zoya’s unique voice comes alive in the way she paints her characters with real colours and not as the caricatures we have become used to. So you have the leading man being a heartbroken crybaby one moment and a conniving manipulator the next. Then you have the leading lady getting rid of morals one moment but celebrating pure love the next.

It is this realness that elevates Luck By Chance to great cinema. And, of course, the autobiographical nature of the characters. It’s easy to compare Zoya and Farhan with Niki’s (Isha Sharvani) character in the film — a spoilt brat born to a star parent getting everything on a platter.

Though that’s not how it had played out for the talented Akhtar siblings. Farhan himself struggled to get Dil Chahta Hai made because he did not tell Aamir he was Javed Akhtar’s son and the superstar conveniently chose to do Laagan first. And Zoya has been waiting for seven years for the script of Luck By Chance to see the light of day. Yes, she wrote this bare-all tale of the industry a good three years before Page 3.

That’s why you can see the earnestness in the storytelling, the honesty in Farhan’s performance. Here’s a director only in his second film as an actor looking and sounding as convincing as a struggler as he does as a superstar.

Konkona, of course, is fantastic. She’s done this role — a girl madly in love nursing a broken heart — a couple of times before but she takes you through it again. Isha Sharvani in the other meaty role in the film is a revelation as the poker-faced star daughter caught in the media and marketing mayhem.

But the “cheap” thrills make Luck By Chance a must-watch. Rishi Kapoor as the roly-poly producer Romy Rolly and Dimple Kapadia as “the crocodile in a chiffon sari” at the top of their game are the real treats. Hrithik, in what can be best described as an extended cameo, is awesome. It’s so good to see him on screen after so long, that too as a man of flesh and blood. His scene with the street kids is a complete delight.

The special appearances are that — special. From Mac Mohan to Anurag Kashyap, Aamir Khan to Kareena Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla to Rajkumar Hirani, everyone brings himself to the movie. The hero montage with Abhishek, Ranbir, Vivek, John and Akshaye is simply hilarious!

The camerawork by Carlos Catalan is good, especially the lamp-lit rooftop shot framed at dawn. Shankar Ehsaan Loy have done better work before even though Baawre and Sapnon se bhare naina work beautifully. Especially the latter which punctuates the auditioning for the hero, leading up to Farhan’s very Taxi Driver-ish look-up into the mirror.

Besides the obvious Bollywood in-jokes, the references to foreign films are unmistakable. Whether it is the Fellini-inspired circus song sequence, or the quick little foot massage Vikram gives to Sona (remember Pulp Fiction?) or the Raging Bull poster hanging from a wall, Zoya mixes it great!

At 160 minutes, Luck By Chance may seem a tad too long but it will perhaps give you a more straightforward perspective in life — Apne raste pe chalte raho, saari duniya us raste pe aa jayegi... The path Zoya has obviously followed.

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