People say comedy is a serious business. Nowadays action is a series of strings and well-timed explosions. Romance is only as good as the chemistry you can fake on screen and moves that move you tend to repeat themselves. The list goes on. With all these going on in Bollywood quite frequently, the horror suspense genre would have to be the most neglected and sadly to say the most unexplored. So naturally when a low budget film with new-to-upcoming artists leading the cast, and debutant director behind the megaphone pull a rabbit-out-of-the-hat magic trick at the box office, the interest is boundless. Brought to us by Bejoy Nambiar and Siddharth Roy Kapoor, Pizza is a remake of Tamil Film with the same name starring Akshay Oberoi and Parvathy Omanakuttan lead roles.
With a solid base for script, great performers and technical crew to bring out the punch for flavour and a capable director to cook up something you sink your teeth into, Pizza the original, had all the trimmings with a miniscule budget to add value. Pizza in 3D has the liberty of a bigger money bags to sponsor a few extra toppings but the delivery has made it stale. Even with a commendable performance from Akshay Oberoi, finely tuned background score and some decent moments in the writing, the poor execution takes away from the film and we are left with an empty stomach.
The premise was good enough. Fear has its moment. Everyone will experience their fair share. So what happens when a non-believer has his moment in the form of Anjali forms the crux of the film. Now it’s all good and fine to say the film isn’t for the faint hearted but at the end of the day, the film doesn’t have the backing for the horror factor that we need to squeal the theatre halls deaf. It takes far too long for the story to proceed and even longer to unfold the whys. Yes if you haven’t watched enough horror films in your life certain scenes will pop out and make you jump but this is by no means its brilliant. It doesn’t help that Akshay took his time to build on his commendable performance scrambling from point to point. Parvathy is plain plastic and is as believable as a door nail. Dipannita Sharma and Anuroday Singh play significant roles but it’s not up to scratch for either of their records.
K is the background score director, pinched from the original, and he delivers once again with this film. This incidentally is his debut to Hindi films so let’s hope we see, or rather hear of him more as he brings the eerie factor we need. However, there is not much that can be said about the music. Make up and editing does their parts but when the director Akshay Akkineni falters in narration, you can’t blame them. It would be as if the director loses sight of the script and then scurries back to deliver the cliff-hanger. This is the biggest disappointment in the film if you think about it as the cliff-hanger points are the highlights in the writing that work for the film.
Yet Akshay Akkineni has reopened the door to a genre that urgently needs some fresh talent to invigorate it. Hopefully, just maybe, someone that will deliver. For now, Pizza is a decayed affair with some fresh toppings.
