Hello Charlie, Prime Video – When Playing Dress-Up Goes A Little Too Far

Hello Charlie is rather a forced comedy with constrained narrative, clowney music and decent direction.

The Hero, Chirag Rastogi played by Aadar Jain is an ambitious yet lousy character who has a hard time paying back the dues of his late father. His search for work gets him to Mumbai where the plot builds up. The film unfolds on this note and soon after introduces the villain, Mr. Makwana, which is played by Jackie Shroff. With his silver pony tail and macho personality, he is the perfect villain although his character never got a chance to bloom and throughout was bottled up in this comedy production.

Alike to the storyline of Ajab Prem ki Gazab Kahaani, Aadar’s character Chirag too is kicked out from several jobs and is shown as a hopeless situation until his big moment arrives. Whilst hustling with his life, Chirag stumbles upon Makwana who is plotting a flee plan with his beauty and brains Mona, played by Elnaaz Norouzi. They plan a road trip from Mumbai to Diu wherein Makwana would disguise as a gorilla named Toto to escape the eyes of the Police. Apparently, this mega plan works because even with struggle, the gorilla reaches its final destination.

For the innocent Chirag, this journey begins with driving his uncle’s truck without consent to deliver a gorilla (Makwana) at Diu for a special performance. Meanwhile for Makwana, this is merely a lift to the port from where he aims to escape. In an attempt of comedy, viewers see a gorilla changing flat tyres, pushing a truck when it ran out of fuel and even riding a bicycle on the interstate highway while every other car breezes away casually. In between all of this character building, our delightful hero meets his love interest in a circus. This character is played by Shhloka Pandit who for a debut only got a bunch of dialogues and a song sequence, adding little to the story. With a bunch of detours, the film finally arrives at the predictable climax where multiple characters fight with each other only for the villain to surrender and for the hero to be awarded.

There are certain elements in the film wherein the director, Pankaj Saraswat tries to show an emotional and mental game but again it fades away with the combination of bright colours, funny music and incidental dialogues. For instance, it builds a concept out of loans and how different it is for people especially when one is middle class and the other, a filthy rich hating businessman.Next is the game of chess. Time and over, the film shows a chess board which apparently is Makwana’s tool to plan his escapade. Moreover, there are bananas throughout the film which unfortunately our villain hates and is served the most when in disguise of a gorilla.

Other than this, the supporting characters are displayed vaguely even with a cast as gifted as Rajpal Yadav, Girish Kulkarni and Bharat Ganeshpure playing the roles of a forest range officer, cunning circus owner and a doctor. They try to keep up with the comedy but end up only appearing funny without actually being funny.Collectively, the movie is not for adults but can be entertaining for children who would rather enjoy Toto and his goofy behaviour.