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F.A.L.T.U Turns 14: Director Remo D’Souza Reflects On His Cult Classic, Says ‘My Film Is About The…’

Remo shares some unheard stories about F.A.L.T.U as the movie completes 14 years of inspiring a generation!

F.A.L.T.U takes stinging swipes at our education system with Fresh, feisty, vivacious and vibrant and with an important message on the gaping loopholes in our education system, this film gets your adrenaline all pumped for its energetic storytelling and more than a fair share of juvenile antics which stop short of being annoying because they represent the dimmed aspirations of hundreds of school drop-outs and semi-drop-outs who run adrift in the absence of the requisite amount of marks to get into college.
F.A.L.T.U offers  a solution borrowed straight from Steve Pink’s 2006 high-school comedy Accepted where the losers and other unlikely heroes opened their own bogus college to pacify their disgruntled parents.

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 As in Ayan Mukerjee vastly superior Wake Up Sid the aimless protagonist takes the earnest parents for granted until the terrible marks precipitates a domestic crisis for the academic failures. After a point, the storytelling acquires a life of its own independent of any other films, desi or firangi. The film exudes a certain gaiety and ebullience. Bright showy colours are used to convey the shallow  life where the only thing to look forward after a party is an after-party.
 Post-debutant director Remo D’Souza (he earlier directed a Bengali film) lets the four principal characters do their own thing. A spirit of unconditional bonhomie runs through the hyper-activity of the characters, as they party, party and then party some more and then somewhere down the line they want to get serious about their education.
The bonding among the quarter of friends never goes into any emotional tangents. There isn’t even a hint of a romance between Jackky Bhagnani and debutante Pooja Gupta who are the official hero and heroine .None of the four principal characters gets to lord over the proceedings. There are no  romantic duets, no attempt to create individual alcoves of  emotional or dramatic interest for any of the characters.

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Not one moment touches your heart. This isn’t a film that encourages a slackening  of narrative energy. The performances are largely functional .Jackky Bhagnani shows a marked improvement since his last film. He gets dependable support from Chandan Roy Sanyal and Angad Bedi. Among the senior cast one is rather taken aback to see Rameshwari who once played the charming scene stealer in Dulhan Wohi Jo Piya Man Bhaye, as Angad Bedi’s South Indian mother.
Angad looks as South Indian as Bishan Singh Bedi. But then we aren’t really looking for cultural specificity in these actors. These characters represent a state of mind. They live in a world of vibrant colours. They are a part of a world where poor academic performance has turned them into diehard pleasure-seekers.
To  avoid thinking of what darkness lies in the future for these young losers, there’s always the next party.

Come, let’s join the fun. Choreographer-director Remo D’Souza describes his venture “F.A.L.T.U” as an autobiographical look at the education system. A lot of what you will see in the film is based on his own experiences.” A lot of what you see in Jackky Bhagnani’s character is me. I’ve made him do a lot of wild things in ‘F.A.L.T.U’. But not half as wild as some of the things I’ve done in my own younger aimless days. I was a mediocre student and my marks used to shame my parents. It took me years to convince them that I wanted to be a choreographer.

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About his film’s theme being similar to 3 Idiots, Remo said, “I had already started shooting ‘F.A.L.T.U’ when I got to know about ‘3 Idiots’. I immediately rang up Raju Hirani (director of the Aamir Khan blockbuster) to ask. I was ready to scrap my film if it bore any resemblance to ‘3 Idiots’. When Raju told me that my film was a different comment on our education system from what he was doing, I breathed a sigh of relief and went ahead with my film like 3 Idiots, my film is also about the loopholes in our education system. Let’s face it. Kids today want to work hard and play hard. No point in making them do sneaky fun stuff when they can openly do what they like and not feel guilty about it.”

First published on: Apr 01, 2025 12:39 PM IST


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