Sunday, December 19, 2010

#8: The President is Coming


It's probably the only movie in it's genre atleast all through this year. Taking the route of what is know as a mockumentary, The President is Coming is an earnest effort by Anuvab Pal.

Featuring an impressive lineup of actors ( read impressive not popular), the movie has a unique screenplay. While the story moves forward in a linear manner, we often see characters speaking directly to the camera and giving an insight of what they've gone through in their childhood or in the past. Anuvab Pal has always listed Woody Allen as one of his major influences and this is clearly one instance of that influence.

The plot surrounds the visit of George Bush and a PR company's attempt to select one Indian who would be fortunate enough to shake hands with him. With an ensemble cast led by Konkona Sen Sharma and a veritable group of reliable actors from theater, the movie has it's moments of joy. Among the characters those played by Anand Tiwari, Namit Das and Ira Dubey particularly stand out. The film could've been a tad quicker with it's pace and does somewhere becomes predictable after the first half. A couple of sub-plots ingrained in the story fail to make the movie any more interesting too and could've been easily done away with.

Where the movie does score is it's interesting main plot and some of the conflicts as displayed amongst the other characters and good performances by it's cast. The President is Coming is not a class act and it doesn't pretend to be. It is that fun flick that could be caught on DVD on a Sunday evening over popcorn with friends.

Rating: 6/10

2 comments:

Supriya Dutta said...

Hey Issac, started following your blog recently...appreciate the way you put the screen-story while interweaving it with some off screen facts.. read a few liked a lot.. :)

IssacMJ said...

Thanks Priya ! :-)