Phuntroo (2016)

Film review #684

Director: Sujay Duhake

SYNOPSIS: An engineering student looking to win the university’s science competition is rejected by a fellow student, and decides to get over her by building an A.I. hologram of her…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Phuntroo is a 2016 Indian sci-fi film. Vira is one of a group of engineering students that are looking to compete in the college’s science competition. Vira is also in love with fellow student Ananya, and when she rejects him, he takes the healthy step of creating a hologram version instead. The plot of the film is a bit of a mess: you’ve got this overarching plot concerning a science competition like an episode of an eighties cartoon, but there’s also a mystery surrounding the death of one of the professors that never really figures into the plot until the very end. The main issue with the film is that the main cast is just an unlikeable bunch. The young men do very little other than complain about not being able to pick up girls, and constantly talk about them in a derogatory way. Imagine if you took the main cast of the Big Bang Theory and made them even more unlikable, you’d get what Phuntroo offers. By far the worst character is the lead, Vira, who decides that he is love with fellow student Anaya, and is mad that she isn’t being rational about being in love with him. He is just so unlikeable, and nowhere in the film does he seem to realise that he is being a jerk, nor does he ever face any real consequences for his actions.

Vira’s response to a justified rejection seems to be to create an A.I. hologram of the woman who rejects him, who is named Phuntroo. Again, he’s not really selling himself as sympathetic. This is supposed to be the main element of the film, but the hologram only appears halfway into the movie, and doesn’t have the time to develop into anything significant. It does the whole “A.I. going out of control and trying to take over shtick,” but it just goes nowhere and doesn’t change the film’s dynamic in any real way. The production is fine, but the script is lacklustre, the characters are horrid, and a few of the ‘jokes’ are plain inappropriate. The ending also just seems to wrap up everything neatly even though none of the characters really grow or learn anything, particularly Vira, who really doesn’t deserve anything. Phuntroo is not worth a watch in any way, it’s no fun, it’s not funny, the story is shallow, and the characters are atrocious.