Movie Review - Coffee With D by Suhel Johar

Coffee With D is like Decaf Coffee

 

 

Vishal Mishra’s “Coffee With D” was to originally release on January 6 but its release was deferred because of alleged threats from Dawood Ibrahim. Apparently, Dawood, the most wanted man in India was reportedly angry that a film that dared to make a spoof on him was made. It is not known whether the threat was actually sent to the makers of “Coffee With D” or just a publicity ploy to get some free mileage. Interestingly for some reason the makers of the film had complained that Sunil Grover the main protagonist in the film had refused to do his bit to promote the film.  So guess that its makers resorted to an unverified threat ploy from Dawood to get some free publicity.    But it seems the ploy failed to get the desired results for the makers of “Coffee With D”, a film  that would have otherwise met with a total silent death at the box office.

The story is a oneliner. A celebrated journalist Arnab interviews one of the world's most dreaded terrorists, "D".  Inspired from former Times Now Editor-In-Chief, Arnab Goswami, Arnab Ghosh (Sunil Grover) is a prime time journalist with a leading news channel who loses his prime time slot since no politician agrees to appear on his show. As a result the chief editor from anchoring a prime time news show is demoted to a cookery show. Unhappy with his demotion, Arnab plans to come back with a bang and that’s when a unique idea strikes him.

He pitches a live interview with the country’s most dreaded man, D (Zakir Hussain) to his editor Roy (Rajesh Sharma). While Roy earlier brushes it off as a stupid idea, after facing pressure from the channel owners for their dropping ratings, agrees to go ahead with it. The so called edit meeting looks like a freak show or a school classroom with the journalists being thrown out for pitching bad story ideas.

Helping Ghosh on this big story is a bimbo Neha (Dipannita Sharma) who is shown to be a Lifestyle editor at the channel. Every scene with Dipannita’s character is laden with sexual innuendos. In exchange for accompanying Arnab to Karachi to interview D, she demands that Arnab sleep with her.
 

Post making a few funny stories surrounding D’s personal life that instantly go viral over social media, Ghosh gets a call for interview with the real man.

Overall a weak script pulls this film down miserably. The biggest problem with the script of this film is its poor representation of media. The chief editor demoting a prime time anchor to a cookery show is not only hard to believe but next to impossible.

The basic idea had potential but the same can't be said of its execution as well as its production values. The locations choices are quite below average and especially the whole TV channel and studio set up looks terrible. Successful channels have swanky studios, this one looked as lavish as a local cable operator’s set-up. Coming to the main angle of the story, the ‘Coffee with D’ concept is portrayed foolishly. Jokes such as D’s right hand not having enough talk time balance on his phone are expected to make you laugh.

The second-half is devoted entirely to the one-on-one between the dreaded gangster and the aggressive newshound. But Arnab is more Labrador than bulldog in D’s presence, and the supposed battle of wits between the characters is what passes off for drama. Thanks to the censor board, a lot of dialogues in the film are muted and ends up as a satire that is meant to offend none.

Made under Mishra’s inept direction the film is made on a floor-level budget with a handful of characters who portray the Indian television media and the Mumbai underworld. Coffee With D has one halfway watchable performance in the form of Pankaj Tripathi who plays D’s henchman Girdhari with as much dignity as he can muster. Sunil Grover makes an interesting getaway from his comic avatar on television to play the loudmouth news-hound but his earnestness is lost due to a weak script.  The same can be said about Zakir Hussain who comes off as a mere caricature. Anjana Sukhani as Grover's spirited sassy pregnant wife is a bagful of fun and Dippanita Sharma have nothing worthwhile to do.

On the whole ‘Coffee With D' is like a decaffeinated coffee that fails to give you a kick.