Ranbir Kapoor's film 'Roy' has failed to sink its teeth into the weekend Box Office share, mainly due to "unprofound" and "glib" writing that has led reviewers to question the 'Barfi' star's decision to sign the film. Ranbir, a talented actor, has been shortchanged in Roy, reviewers feel.
Shot largely in Malaysia, ‘Roy’ is a romantic thriller that also stars Arjun Rampal (Kabir Grewal), and Jacqueline Fernandez (Ayesha Aamir) in a double role, Cyrus Broacha and Anupam Kher. Kabir, a playboy and a filmmaker heads to Malaysia, and meets Ayesha, another filmmaker from London who becomes his 23rd notch on the bedpost. Ayesha decides to leave him when she finds out about his torrid, Casanova lifestyle. Ranbir, a master art thief, plays Kabir’s muse for a film that is a roaring success and falls in love with Jacqueline’s second role, Tia.
Although the movie has managed to rake in over Rs 20 crore in just two days, critics are not impressed.
Rediff has called the picture a snooze-fest that has been mostly a slow torture to watch: “Roy is so tangled in its inflated, erratic ideas of a pseudo mystery that it ceases to make sense even before it takes off,” writes Sukanya Verma. “In Roy's incoherent, vacuous universe of real and make-believe, characters just pop in and out randomly, and out of context.” Verma also describes Kapoor’s eyes as ‘jaded and exhausted’, because he is too good for ‘this bunkum’.
Rajeev Masand appears to agree in his review: “Ranbir looks like he was punished and forced to be in this movie; it's such a sullen performance, you have to ask why a charmer by profession, a man who must win hearts so he can steal art, would never crack a smile. When it comes to the other stars, Masand credits Arjun with giving it what he’s got. However, he says, it doesn’t help that his character Kabir isn’t particularly likeable. “Jacqueline, too, comes off an unimpressive miscast in a part that required greater range,” says Masand. He has given the movie a score of a paltry one out of five, claiming that the only strength in the movie was its terrific soundtrack.
Critic Anna Vetticad said she was fine with the movie till after the interval. “Ranbir is always, always easy on the eye,” she says adding that she has begun enjoying the ‘much-derided Arjun’s evolution as an actor since Don’. She even feels Jacqueline has potential and compliments the chemistry between Ayesha and Kabir. However, even Vetticad cannot ignore the giant question, and finally gives in: “The film is called Roy, yet Roy is the character we get to know least in the story…. Perhaps Ranbir too felt he had been taken for granted. I can think of no other reasons why the opening credits over-compensated for the neglect of his character by saying: ‘Ranbir Kapoor In A Very Dynamic Role.’” Vetticad says screenwriter and director Vikramjit Singh should have used better lines than ‘glib, unprofound’ philosophies.
Shubhra Gupta from The Indian Express has several questions for Roy, including what is Ranbir doing in a movie like this, what exactly was the movie about, and who has this movie been made for? “A painting is stolen. A bunch of people show up, say stuff and leave: Rajit Kapoor as an unintentionally hilarious detective, Anupam Kher as the eternal paternal figure, Shernaz Patel as the only one struggling to keep a straight face. And we wait and wait for something to happen,” says Gupta. The movie is an empty gabfest shot in a good-looking location, she says. Gupta questions the unimpressive artistic retro touches, like Kabir’s typewriter when he can clearly afford a laptop, given there are a plethora of fancy gadgets dotting the movie, and finally labels ‘Roy’ as a lazy mystery and enigma that never really got unwrapped.