Worth its name

I was slightly overwhelmed to see the response to the first day, second show of F.A.L.T.U, and very unnerved to see that I was probably the oldest of the audience thronging the multiplex screen. The crowds cheered when, after an impatient wait, the doors were flung open and they were let in to the cool darkness of the cinema hall. The collective sigh of relief was palpable – this is the post-exam season for many, and there's been a long dry spell at the box office. The young audience knew they were going to like the cool, hip, college caper, even before they saw it. I wasn't so sure, after I saw the promos. (One of the dialogues goes: She – Main astronaut banke chand pe chadhna chahti hu. He – main Ambani banna chahta tha, par ab soch raha hu chand ban jau *shudder*). But my cynical cringes were drowned out by the loud shout-outs for the popular Party abhi baaki hain number, the low-brow, instantly identifiable campus humour, and the message at the end of the movie, redeeming the vast majority that exists lost, between complete losers and high achievers. The movie had connected completely with its target audience – fun-loving freshers, college goers in need of a break from badgering parents and anything that remotely resembles the tone of a lecture. So I grudgingly concede to well-known choreographer, debutant director Remo D'Souza a few positives. He talks to the youngsters in a language they use and understand, he gets the campus atmospherics right, he suspends all judgment while portraying the party-hard, carefree lifestyle of generation now and there's a disarming youthful energy about his film. The first half is all frolic. I didn't mind tagging along so far. The discomfort begins in the second half. We've seen a group of youngsters (Jackky Bhagnani, Pooja Gupta, Angad Bedi, Chandan Roy Sanyal) pulling off a fraud, founding a fake college that accepts the likes of them - those rejected by other institutes. They've successfully pulled wool over their parents' eyes. Google (Arshad Warsi), a wheeler dealer crook, and Bajirao (Riteish Deshmukh) the fake “principled” principal, are their partners in crime. It is when the two men suddenly start encouraging the youngsters to find their real calling, to do something with their lives, that the movie begins to ring untrue. The director's real purpose, we discover, was to champion the cause of an alternative, informal, flexible education system that supports non-academic talents. He, of course, does not bother us with the niggling nitty gritties – funding, paper work, structuring of courses - of this unconventional universe. But the audience around me wanted, perhaps needed, that kind of uplifting emotion that makes your heart swell, but isn't too taxing on the brain. FALTU is just the thing they were looking forward to. Others, like me, should leave it be.