Samrat & Co movie review

RATING: 2/5
After his last uneventful outing at the movies with Ishq Actually (2013) Rajeev Khandelwal continues his bad luck with this disaster called Samrat & Co. Misery loves company. Perhaps that's why you have an assorted bunch of actors in this Kaushik Ghatak (Ek Vivah Aisa Bhi, 2008) directed film out of which you come out feeling nothing but miserable.

The film starts with some kind of lame homage being paid to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his invention Sherlock Holmes. However, this whodunit is nothing but an extremely poor copy of Rajeev Khandelwal trying to be Sherlock Holmes. His weird, moussed up hair style and his moronic soliloquies while trying to unravel the puzzles of the cases he takes up do him in further.

Let's cut the misery short. Rich, beautiful girl Dimpy Singh (Madalsa Sharma) seeks help from Detective No 1 Samrat Tilakdhari (Rajeev Khandelwal) because the garden in her mansion was mysteriously being sapped of its cholorophyll. Sillies, we mean the hara-bhara bageecha was turning dry and yellow. So was the health of her father Mahendra Pratap Singh (Girish Karnad). If that wasn't bad enough even her father's favourite ghoda dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances.

Weirdly hair-styled Samrat likes to take up weird cases. Cut to the patriarch's grand mansion in Shimla and its numerous occupants where Samrat has landed to solve the uljhi paheli in this haveli where a murder occurs soon after he arrives. Now you know, who will solve the case and reveal the mystery of the murderer but not before he has spoken to himself 250 times.

The film is a tremendously bad copy of scenes from other detective films. There is not a single redeeming feature. Even Rajeev Khandelwal, whom you would not count as a bad performer is listless. In fact, you feel that he is miscast here as a detective who talks super fast, mouthing one-liners which are anything but witty. Add to that an unnecessary romantic angle forced into a detective film. Why? So that Dimpy can fantasise romantic moments with Detective No 1.

The film comes across as a very amateur attempt at a thriller. You just wish the silly film had ended at the interval point before continuing with its silliness. Even the production values are outright shoddy.

After seeing this film you miss the Rajeev Khandelwal who debuted in the brilliantly made Aamir (2008). Better to watch the more thrilling CID on TV then suffer Samrat and his company.