Review of Fan (2016) by F B — 19 Apr 2016

Highly ambitious, inconsistent and poorly executed, Maneesh Sharma's Fan is benifited by Shahrukh Khan's performance as the obsessed 25 year-old fan Gaurav (more than 50% of it's credit to Hollywood's renowned make-up artist Greg Cannom) but Habib Faisal's weak screenplay and overall work from Maneesh Sharma don't do the concept any justice.

Gaurav (Shahrukh Khan), an internet cafe runner from Delhi maintains striking resemblance with his idol Aryan Khanna (also played by Shahrukh Khan, a cinematic representation of his own self) and is renowned for impersonating him in festivals around his home-town. Gaurav's obsession for Aryan keeps growing as his idol's birthday approaches and he aims big for his it, just like the movie does in film-making aspects but both Gaurav and the movie fail at their respective ambitions. Gaurav seeks attention of his idol and wants to meet him for the first time ever but after his plans don't end how they were supposed to, his psychotically obsessed side leads him to attempt to seeking his idol's attention through illegal methods that provide strong character development for Gaurav but the rest of the story drags that part a lot more than it had to.

Bringing Gaurav's character to life is a big achievement to the film and the character is very intriguing in the first half at least, with a remarkable performance by Shahrukh Khan that though at times makes the character look abnormal but still Gaurav ends as one of the most satisfying things in the movie and may easily distract mainstream Bollywood audience from the not so good plot of this film.

Now what Gaurav does, proves to be strong enough to get his idol's attention but he gets it in the worst possible way as he'd expected Aryan to be flattered with what his "fan" did for him and he even admits that he'd have the guts to take someone's life just to please Aryan, after he's arrested for a few days by Aryan's goons in a visually pleasing but generally unwanted action sequence. Gaurav thinks that he deserved more from his idol and then drags the whole concept of a star being nothing without fans throughout the movie. Till this moment, the movie provides good character development and entertainment but the later parts of the movie spend time destroying everything the first act developed.

Now the plot follows Gaurav doing what mostly is done in fan/idol grudge flicks; destroying an idol's career through obtuse methods that never really had an impact in film industries in real life but unfortunately in Fan, Aryan feels very concerned about them. The same Gaurav who hardly managed to afford money for visiting his idol a while back is now seen in London, without proper explanation to how he got there and makes a visit to Madame Tussauds to impersonate a violent Aryan, causing an arrest warrant for Aryan. And then out of nowhere, we see Gaurav in Croatia who again takes advantage of his resemblance with Aryan and sexually harasses someone at a party, victimising Aryan again. And then we have this movie's most illogical and blunder of a part where Gaurav is chased by Aryan over beautiful Croatian rooftops. The stunts are done very well but one wouldn't expect a narrow minded fanboy and an actor with no character development to feature in this very spy movie sequence.

And then after Gaurav succeeds at damaging Aryan's personality as an actor, he decides to give one last blow by making a visit to Aryan's place, ill behaving with his wife and damaging some of his property. And that's where the Badlapur effect comes into play as it's been so much of Gaurav impersonating Aryan that now we get Aryan, who hardly shares a few words with Gaurav face to face in the whole movie impersonating him like he'd known him for ages, at the same festival that Gaurav performs annually at. The climax is so absurd that it didn't even make any sense to whatever the hell this movie implied. Seriously, what the hell? The word fan is so often repeated because that's the only way Gaurav was a 'fan' of Aryan. All we saw was an obsessed, jealous and a mentally stupid young guy who wasted his talent by seeking attention of a star that he resembled and worshipped.

With a potentially powerful concept wasted by horrid action sequences and poor screen-writing, SRK's Fan is yet another movie to join Jai Ho (2014), Kick (2014), Gabbar is Back (2015) and Badlapur (2015) in the list of potentially strong movies smothered by typical Bollywood masala style of film-making. The first act does provide bits of character development but after that, all we witness is the destruction of all that character development. Aryan is a very poor character with hardly any character build up. He goes from being a cool/careless guy into a hands on Mission Impossible wannabe with all the unnecessary action he gets. The film's title itself tells the whole story. If you're a fan of SRK or majority of Bollywood movies, this one becomes an automatic must watch for you but the film struggles a lot to have it's moments, if you're an overall movie freak. More than drama, fan is your typical action movie that uses script for it's own goods. "I'll steal your stardom," Gaurav says to Aryan in the film. Not sure if he succeeded at stealing Aryan's stardom but both Gaurav and Aryan stole 130 precious minutes of my life.