Review of Fan (2016) by Jayakrishnan R — 17 Apr 2016

Who is the biggest movie star in the world? Here are some hints: He started out acting mainly on TV before making it big in movies - which include romances, serious dramas, plus other genres. His films deal with themes of national identity and connecting people around the world, as well as gender, racial, social and religious differences. (George Clooney? Tom Hanks? Harrison Ford? No, no and... no.) This movie star won more than a dozen major acting awards and had 3 of the 5 slots for nominees in the category of Best Actor - in a single year - more than once! He also performs in stage shows as a dancer, he's the co-owner of a film company and a professional sports team, he's been honored by the U.N. for his philanthropy and Newsweek magazine has called him one of the 50 most powerful people on earth.

Of course, the answer to the question depends on how you define your terms, but at least in the business sense (and according to Forbes magazine), the biggest movie star in the world is... Shah Rukh Khan. He is an Indian actor in his early 50s. Surprised? Not if you know that India produces four times as many films each year as the U.S. (about 2,000 vs. about 500). Plus, the biggest part of Khan's fan base is in the very populous regions of southern and eastern Asia, the Middle East and the former USSR - all areas where you'd find the most fans of Indian "Bollywood" films. Shah Rukh Khan is so famous, that fans around the world know him simply as SRK. He's also known as the stars (plural) of "Fan" (NR, 2:22).

Who better than the biggest movie star in the world to play... the biggest movie star in the world - AND an obsessed fan who stalks him? In "Fan", SRK plays Aryan Khanna, a Bollywood mega-star in his late 40s - and he also plays Gaurav Chandna, the owner of a cyber café who's in his mid-20s. Gaurav is obsessed with Aryan (which is an understatement along the lines of "gee, the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign is unusual"). Gaurav covers literally every square inch of his bedroom wall with pictures of his idol and develops an impersonation of Aryan which is so spot-on that he wins the talent show at a local carnival every year. Gaurav decides to use the cash award from winning his third consecutive talent show to travel over 800 miles from his home in Delhi to Aryan's home in Mumbai. Gaurav wants to see Aryan come out of his house to waive to his fans on his birthday. Gaurav also wants to meet the man he calls his "god" and show off the trophy he won by imitating the star.

Gaurav goes too far in his efforts to meet Aryan and leaves Mumbai bitterly disappointed about how things turned out (two more understatements, by the way). Back at home, Gaurav pretends everything's fine, lying to his parents (Deepika Amin and Yogendra Tiku) and refusing to talk to his crush Neha (Shriya Pilgaonkar) about what happened in Mumbai, but it's clear Gaurav has changed. He sells the cyber café and all the computers so he can get money to stalk Aryan - and use the similarity in their appearances to carry out a plan that's almost a year in the making. Gaurav is determined to force an apology out of Aryan - even if it ruins both of their lives. Gaurav's mission takes him from Delhi to London to Croatia, to London, to Mumbai, then back to Delhi, where it all began for both men, and where this battle of wills WILL be settled, one way or another.

"Fan" is an impressive cinematic achievement, but is too outrageous for its own good. Hollywood's most notable attempts to tell stories about dangerously overzealous fans include two movies called "The Fan" (a 1981 version with James Garner and Lauren Bacall, and a 1996 iteration with Robert DeNiro and Wesley Snipes), but this Indian film is more ambitious than either of those. Using the same actor in the roles of the pursuer and the pursued was a gutsy call, but even more impressive is how well director Maneesh Sharma pulled it off. Make-up, by Oscar-winner Greg Cannom, seamlessly blended with CGI, makes it virtually impossible for someone not familiar with Shah Rukh Khan to realize that both main characters are being played by the same actor. What's more, most filmmakers will tell you that it's easier to make an actor look older than younger, but this film does things the other way around - and it works! Of course, SRK's diverse performances sell the trick, even if he does sell it a little too well.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of a billion (give or take a few hundred million) SRK fans, I feel that the star's acting is much like the rest of the movie - mostly strong, but punctuated by moments of silliness. Khan often overacts (usually, as Gaurav). The script, by Habib Faisal and Sharat Katariya, peppers the story with exaggerated and implausible plot points and dialog - most egregiously when it comes to Gaurav's over-the-top obsession with his idol, which even those who care about Gaurav struggle to understand. Further contributing to the film's unintentional merriment are badly choreographed and poorly acted fight scenes, action scenes which go well beyond anything these characters with their backgrounds would ever be involved in, and a score which is often mismatched with the scene's mood, or just distractingly cheesy. In spite of this film's interesting story, its well-intentioned reflections on the yin-yang nature of fame and hero-worship, and its effective use of its star in a dual role, "Fan" needed to be more serious and darker to reflect the dark tone of the plot and to be taken more seriously as a film. As much as I liked some aspects of this movie, this Movie Fan is not much of a fan of "Fan". "C+".