Farrey

Farrey Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Alizeh Agnihotri, Ronit Roy, Arbaaz Khan, Juhi Babbar, Prasanna Bisht, Sahil Mehta, Zeyn Shaw, Shilpa Shukla

Director: Soumendra Padhi

What’s Good: Everything that doesn’t change from the source material

What’s Bad: The complex of adding unnecessary modifications ruining what the original has established

Loo Break: Just like the characters, you’ll need a bathroom to cheat, cheat on the boring

Watch or Not?: Only if you haven’t watched Bad Genius, the Thai Film it’s based on

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 1 hour 55 minutes

User Rating:

With the title ‘Farrey’ (slang for copying chits in exams), you can precisely predict where the film will start. Yes, an examination hall and that’s where we’re introduced to Niyati (Salman Khan’s niece Alizeh), who scores all India #1 in her tenth board. An orphan, Niyati stays with a caring couple of Warden & Zoya (Ronit Roy and Juhi Babbar), who run a shelter home for girls under the age of 18. Yes, Ronit Roy doesn’t get a name till the end and is addressed as ‘Warden’ even in the ending credits.

Niyati is smart enough to get into Delhi’s elite school, whose teachers consider IIT a ‘rat race’ & want their best students to go to Oxford after taking the scholarship. Niyati is offered the same, but not for long before it gets revoked as she helps the dumb, rich group of Chhavi (Prasanna Bisht) & friends to cheat and clear the exams.

Because Niyati was so good at making students cheat, they offered her a huge amount of money to continue doing so. Because she’s an orphan, with Warden & Zoya struggling to support her scholarship financially, she decides to give in and help the students cheat on a higher level. What happens next forms the central crux of the story.

Farrey Movie Review: Script Analysis

Adapted from a popular Thai film, Bad Genius, and because that film is ‘desi’ at heart with the message it tries to give, Farrey, too, keeps a majority of things similar. Though it does a critical commentary on the education system, it misses a few important things that made the original one a great experience to watch. The emotional core of Bad Genius is extremely strong because of the lead Lynn’s father being a low-earning teacher and how the school collects extra fees from him despite the scholarship. This lays the perfect base for her to have a motive and work on it till the end.

Here, modifying the character that worked best for the original version works against the film’s otherwise set flow. The father turns into a guardian running a care home, and the solid motive of a daughter turning fraudulent for money is restricted to the lead being an underprivileged Orphan who’s just nice to the others. Lynn, being an intelligent student, is portrayed through multiple scenes; how she calculates the amount she’ll be bribed in seconds shows her genius. Farrey’s Niyati is smart just because the story establishes her all-India #1 in the tenth standard; why not prove it with examples for a better connection?

What Farrey manages to match is the tension built during the cheating scenes; though I missed the piano trick here, overall, it’s a good attempt at recreating the stress using different tactics. The teachers here sucked comparatively, as Bad Genius created discomfort in that zone as well. Look-wise, yes, Keiko Nakahara’s camerawork makes this feel like a more polished version of the two.

Farrey Movie Review: Star Performance

Alizeh Agnihotri does most of the things right to make her debut a special one; along with being natural at what she does, she portrayed a solid depth in the tougher emotional sequences as well. Niyati is a challenging role to agree to in a first film, and Alizeh puts in her everything to make sure things take the correct route; at times, she overcompensates for the same.

They did it badly to Sahil Mehta because the sudden tonal shift of his character doesn’t really go well. A struggling poor scholar suddenly not only agrees to help the rich cheat but also starts to play games with them like he was this con artist since forever.

Ronit Roy‘s character was modified, and I still don’t understand WHY. Even if they’ve cut-copy-pasted the same relationship and arc, Ronit would’ve killed this. Juhi Babbar never gets to take center stage, and she’s okay with what she got. Prasanna Bisht is decent enough with the highs and delivers an in-control performance.