Debutant director Remo D’Souza’s F.A.L.T.U is a singularly low IQ reworking of the 2006 Justin Long comedy Accepted, about a slacker who isn’t accepted into any college and so he creates his own.
Here Long’s role is played by Jackky Bhagnani who is Ritesh, the party boy without a future. When Ritesh and his equally low-achiever friends aren’t accepted into any college, they create the Fakirchand and Lakirchand Trust University or F.A.L.T.U.. In Accepted, it was the South Harmon Institute of Technology or S.H.I.T.
The first half of F.A.L.T.U is spent in foolish frolicking – Arshad Warsi playing a character named Google shows up and donates an unused building to the kids for their fake college – what does Google do and why is he called Google? I couldn’t tell you.
In the second half, F.A.L.T.U becomes a paean to the importance of alternate education, not conforming to the prescribed path and following your heart.
So the loser kids become winners by doing what they love – from fashion to cooking to fitness. Yes, it’s 3 Idiots territory only with dialogue like: Children are never useless. It’s just that they are used less. What are the actors going to do with writing like this?
Arshad Warsi and Ritiesh Deshmukh, playing the college principal, are on auto-pilot.
Jackky tries to be effortlessly charming but the strain shows. Stray bits of F.A.L.T.U feel sincere but the film is so staggeringly moronic that you walk out completely exhausted. I’m going with one and a half star.(NDTV)
