As you walk out of Roy you wonder what you could have possibly done to warrant being subjected to that. Yes, we have our first unbearable release of 2015. And before you argue that we’ve had other bad ones, rest assured they were not as bad as this.
Vikramjit Singh’s debut film has a promising cast and even a somewhat promising premise but apart from that it has nothing. It has no script, no performances to boast of and above all, no entertainment value.
In brief this snoozefest is the story of a film writer/director (Arjun Rampal) who sets out to make the third instalment to his largely successfully film franchise. He meets another filmmaker while shooting (Jacqueline Fernandes) and the outcome of their relationship has repercussions on the film he is making. Amidst the story of the two filmmakers is also the story of the film characters that Rampal’s director character is penning, a thief (Roy, played by Ranbir Kapoor) who ends up falling in love with the woman (again, Jacqueline Ferndandes) from whom he is robbing. Eventually Vikramjit Singh tries to establish that their worlds collide and have us question whether Roy’s love story was a figment of filmmaker’s imagination or in fact reality. But by then you’re really not going to waste anymore time and energy thinking about the debacle of a film.
The above synopsis is just about as much sense as Roy can possibly make. Vikramjit Singh attempt to come off looking sophisticated and nuanced however ends up delivering a script-less pretentious film. The scenes move from one to the other without any purpose, each scene leaving the audience with more questions than the one before. Questions like, why is he doing that, why is she saying that, what is happening now…and yes all of these are never answered.
The three actors are asked to do nothing more than strike brooding poses in clichéd attires. Ranbir Kapoor looks downright disinterested. Jacqueline appears to be trying all too hard to grasp something that is not there. Arjun Rampal maintains a monotone persona that gets as annoying as his character’s inherent need to continuously sport a hat.
Perhaps Singh wanted to make a sophisticated story about a writer, his muse and his creative and real worlds crashing. But his endeavour fails miserably and his purpose isn’t very clear. In the end the film starts looking like an appalling rip off of Leena Yadav’s Shabd, which in retrospect is a far more superior film in comparison.
It is truly worrying how a film like Roy hits the screens without no-one reflecting on the appalling quality of it. Surely we deserve to shout out an apology to all those makers struggling to get their scripts on a screen when we have films like this taking their spots. Save yourself the most traumatic experience you’ll have in a long time and avoid Roy at all costs.
