Ranveer Singh’s ‘Cirkus’ Fails To Entertain

Indian film Cirkus starring Ranveer Singh in the lead role, released on Friday and had an underwhelming start at the box office. It had a dismal opening of $0.75 million on the first day of the theatrical release on December 23. In India, the film failed to pick up over the weekend and it only collected $0.77 million and $0.98 million on Saturday and Sunday respectively. Cirkus managed a mere $2.5 million over the first weekend in India, despite getting a wide release over 3200 screens across India. It collected $268,000 over the weekend in the US markets.

Directed by Rohit Shetty, the film stars Singh in a double role and Jacqueline Fernandez and Pooja Hegde are paired opposite him. Varun Sharma also stars in the film alongside Singh in double roles. The film marks the third collaboration between Singh and Shetty after their two cop films – Simmba and Sooryavanshi. Cirkus also features Sanjay Mishra, Mukesh Tiwari, Siddhartha Jadhav, Vrajesh Hirjee, Murali Sharma, Ashwini Kalsekar and Tiku Talsania, among several others.

The film is inspired by Gulzar’s 1982 film Angoor, and in turn, by Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. The original featured Sanjeev Kumar and Deven Verma in the lead roles of lookalikes and is still considered one of the greatest comic gems of Hindi films.

Cirkus revolves around twins exchanged at birth, for the sake of a social science experiment. Shetty’s attempt is not just way behind that mark, it often feels insultingly boring. The film is set in the 1960s and the makers have done a shoddy job of recreating that era with randomly placed flowers and colors. Shetty’s films have never inspired high hopes of critical appreciation. His is a brand of slapstick comedy (Golmaal and Bol Bachchan) and Cirkus fails even at that. Almost all of his previous films have been labeled as irrational, but none of his films have been as flat and unfunny as the latest one.

Even Mishra’s brilliance fails to rise above the unexciting writing of the film. Sharma’s brilliant comic timing also goes to waste. The film has been widely panned by critics and it ensured that the collections for Cirkus could not take off even over the Christmas special weekend.

Meanwhile, James Cameron directorial Avatar: The Way Of Water collected $7.1 million over the second weekend of its release in India The sci-fi thriller ranked up as the fifth highest-grossing film of 2022 globally. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and The Batman. It took 13 years for Cameron to come up with the sequel to his 2009 original Avatar. The film has earned $855 million worldwide.

Cirkus is the last major film before the year 2022 comes to an end. With the disappointing box office figures, it is a dull end of the year for Hindi films. It will be a lull of two weeks before Bollywood will see another theatrical release. Arjun Kapoor-starrer Kuttey will release on January 13, 2023. The film also stars Naseeruddin Shah and Tabu in lead roles.