Yahoo Movies Review: Karwaan
Cast: Dulquer Salmaan, Irrfan Khan, Mithila Palkar
Direction: Akarsh Khurana
Rating: ***1/2
‘Karwaan’ is such a fun ride. It is almost incredible that such a delectable tale can be weaved around a road trip. And this is no ordinary road trip. It’s a trip to exchange dead bodies delivered to wrong addresses. This is dark humour at its trippy best!
Avinash (Dulquer Salmaan) has clearly lost his mojo – his is a mundane existence, stuck at a desk job he doesn’t enjoy. He goes through life almost mechanically, resigned to his daily routine, incapable of making a fresh start. At the end of one dull day at work, he gets a call informing him that his father has passed away and he needs to collect the body from the cargo the next morning. Later, he discovers he has the wrong corpse and he now has to travel all the way to Cochin to sort out the mix-up.
Enter Shaukat (Irrfan Khan), his slightly eccentric but ‘good-at-heart’ friend who owns a minivan and offers to drive him down for his father’s last rites. A comedy of error ensues once they embark on this unusual journey.
On their way, Avinash and Shaukat have to pick up the young Tanya (Mithila Palkar) who is the grand-daughter of the other deceased person. These three unlikely travelers take you on a journey that makes you laugh out loud often, roll your eyes at times and reach for your tissues more than once.
Shaukat has his own idiosyncrasies. He is old-fashioned, easily offended by the lifestyle choices of this generation, and ever ready to dispense gyaan that no one really cares about. Irrfan’s comic timing is just spot on – he is so good with his subtle brand of wry humour that the audience is left guffawing long after the joke is over.
‘Karwaan’ plays out like a light-hearted comedy but it manages to neatly tuck in a story that tugs at your heartstrings even as you enjoy this crazy ride.
Avinash had a dysfunctional relationship with his father, who thwarted his ambition of wanting to become a photographer. Hailing from a very middle-class family, it wasn’t really fashionable to be a rebel, so he decided to pursue a career in IT and landed a boring 9-5 job that his father’s friend offered. And when his father passed away, the two were not on talking terms.
It’s on this trip, when talking to Tanya, that Avinash realizes that he himself is as judgmental and unreasonable as his father was. Some of us are so critical of our parents and their decisions that we don’t realise that one fine day, we have just become like them.
At the end of this heartwarming journey, we realise that not all relationships are perfect but we should learn to make our peace with them before it is too late and hopefully, make life choices that make us happy.
Director Akarsh Khurana manages to get some interesting characters other than the main leads who keep you invested in this tale. The music has the right breezy feel to it which adds just the right amount of zing to this slice of life tale.
Watch ‘Karwaan’ for Irrfan and Dulquer, this one will keep you smiling much after you have left the theatre.
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