Roy (movie)-- My Review

Roy was one of those movies I was looking forward to watching this year, mostly because of the rather dark and intriguing poster.

Then when the soundtrack came out, I was thrilled. Roy, without a doubt, has one of the best soundtracks so far this year. My decision was made- I wanted to watch the movie as soon as it came out.

After watching it, all I can say is that Roy would have worked best as a novel because as a movie it fails to keep the audience engaged. The unimportant scenes are too lengthy and the few (very few!) Interesting parts are barely articulated well.

One of the major flaws of the movie is the editing. The story could be told in an hour but the poor editing stretches it to almost three. It's three hours of watching the actors wear drab clothes and sullen expressions.

My biggest gripe with the movie was the way the songs were placed. An excellent soundtrack deserved an excellent choreography. Alas, this isn't so. The peppy numbers are awkwardly placed and there is no dance which makes sense since the male actors are not known to be the best of dancers. A sensual song is wasted by being shown during the end credits and a soulful breakup song isn’t utilized to show the despair of the hero. Instead we get long scenes of the hero moping and a song where he mopes some more.

The story is this: A writer/director suffers from writer's block and has affairs with women to get inspired. Stephen King had mentioned in one of his stories about how writing was sometimes an aphrodisiac act- I suppose Kabir believes that wholeheartedly.

He meets Ayesha, a filmmaker and voila! He's inspired to write again. Ayesha knows of his ladies’ man reputation but still sees him, then has second thoughts, then takes him back then disappears from his life.

All this time, the story is being written and the titular character is introduced. Roy is an art thief who falls in love with Tia during one of his heists. He leaves her after stealing her painting and like Kabir, realizes he has actually fallen in love for the first time.

However when Ayesha leaves Kabir, he loses his inspiration to write and that is where Roy's story comes at a standstill too.

All the actors do a commendable job with the part they’re given. They look the part and definitely act it, but their talents do little to salvage the movie that suffers from shoddy editing -if there was any editing to begin with.