Movie Review: F. A. L. T. U. (2011)

It’s pretty common for Bollywood to rip off Hollywood story lines and present them in an Indianized version of a Hollywood film. This time it comes from choreographer Remo D’Souza with the film F. A. L. T. U.

Rating: 1 Out Of 5 Stars

Basically stolen from the cult favourite Justin Long starring ACCEPTED, F. A. L. T. U.  follows the exact same premise as a bunch of high school students, unable to get accepted into any College… create their own. At first to appease their parents, but later it becomes a fully fledged fake institution of self learning.

As is the case with most ‘inspirations’ of Hollywood done in Bollywood, this one pretty much sucked. The entire story follows exactly like its predecessor, however, the changes made to basically ‘Indianize’ it for a South Asian audience, don’t make much sense.

Jacky Bhagnani stars as the man with the plan, as he coerces his nerd friend to create a site and fake acceptance letters for his friends into a fake university. Then, through the help of Arshad Warsi’s ‘Google’, they are able to get an awesome building to use as their fake college, to put on a show for their parents. First of all, the character of ‘Google’ is never even explained properly. He just shows up, and is there the rest of the way helping everyone. It’s implied that he is essentially a purveyor of illegal things and a man that can get things done. But his connection to the college students, his apparent reasoning behind not doing anything else but palling around these kids, are never explained. Which is a li’l creepy, that this dude is hanging around with College Students… but not funny creepy.

Anyway, due to the creation of the website, hundreds of other no good kids with dead end futures show up after being ‘accepted’ into this fake college. Even after the revelation that the college is fake, the kids decide to stay, simply to fuck around and party. This, after what was intended to be an emotional monologue of a few kids about how proud their family was that they got accepted, how will they ever show their face if they don’t go to college, some even contemplating suicide if they don’t get higher learning. Yet, the fact that they’ll be partying at a fake college for 4 years and wasting their parents’ money, didn’t seem to matter for those issues. In ACCEPTED, at least the rest of the students were in the dark about the fake-ness of the college, so just assumed it was a party college; their actions could be excused.

F. A. L. T. U.  doesn’t even mention the fact that their college needs to be accredited in order to run. They just do what they want. At one point the students realize they can build an education and career from their hobbies and start subjects about their interests, such as cooking, fashion design, tattooing (really…) and self learn these things. Teachers you ask? Well, apparently they just did video interviews of famous people in certain fields and that’s meant to serve in exchange of having a full time teacher for each subject/course. I don’t even need to point out the ridiculous-ness of that.

This film fails completely in every aspect. After being exposed and having to prove to the world that their way of learning is better than the society accepted way, the end scene is the kids infiltrating a college competition and putting on a show, that’s supposed to change everyone’s minds about the validity of their courses and subject matter. And of course, clue in the obligatory speech that makes everything better and resolves all the issues in the last few minutes, and that’s all you have.

F. A. L. T. U.  is a horrible film with no heads or tails about what it’s doing. The concepts put forth are interesting, but presented in the most unappealing and stupid manner. (I’m running out of bad words for this film) The characters aren’t at all relateable, because, while trying to squeeze humour out of their circumstances, the makers didn’t develop anything serious that might make the audience sympathize or empathize with the characters. Their problems aren’t that the education system failed them, it’s that they don’t LIKE to study. Great. An interview with a professional is meant to serve as a teacher throughout one semester of a course. Even the sets weren’t completely well thought out. I mean, what’s meant to look like a ‘cool’ and ‘happening’ college campus, has a tattoo parlour and a kitchen right next to each other, sharing the same room with neon lights plastered all around it. That’s just disgusting.

‘Faltu’ in hindi essentially means ‘bogus’. The one thing this movie does right, is live up to its name.