Shobhaa De has made it clear that the ‘Mirzapur’ universe did little to win her over. The veteran columnist, who revealed that she had never watched the hit Amazon Prime Video crime thriller, recently decided to give its theatrical spin-off, Gurmeet Singh’s ‘Mirzapur: The Movie’, a chance. However, despite the film’s strong box-office run, she came away far from impressed.Sharing her review in an Instagram Reel on Thursday, Shobhaa said she questioned the need for the film after watching it.“All I can say is Mirzapur: The Movie maybe should not have been made at all,” said Shobhaa De. She admitted that she went into the film expecting more after seeing the hype surrounding the franchise. “I went here with a lot of expectations, given the whole hype and the whole buildup to the brand Mirzapur. I came away feeling, ‘What the hell is going on?,’” she added, accompanied by an eyeroll.While the film itself failed to impress her, Shobhaa had praise for its ensemble cast. She singled out Ravi Kishan and Ali Fazal for their performances, calling Kishan’s turn as antagonist Babban Babua Yadav “brilliant” and Fazal’s portrayal of Guddu “unbelievably good”.However, she was less enthusiastic about Pankaj Tripathi’s Kaleen Bhaiya. “Mr. Tripathi playing Mr. Tripathi has become a bit too monotonous,” she said. Shobhaa further criticised what she saw as a repetitive performance, adding, “The same old expressions, the same old delivery.”She was also taken aback by Tripathi’s intimate scenes with Rasika Dugal, who plays his wife Beena Tripathi. Referring to Tripathi as “Mr. Goodie-Goodie”, Shobhaa said she was surprised to see him doing “a full-on sex scene”. She described Beena as “Lady Macbeth” or a “vamp-ish” character.Her other complaints included what she called “violence of every conceivable kind for no reason” and “a story that goes nowhere”. The film apparently struggled to hold her attention too, as she confessed to falling asleep during the screening.Shobhaa said she felt asleep for “something like 15 minutes” and claimed she also heard two women sitting behind her “snoring”. Summing up her experience, she said, “Maybe, it’s meant for men. It wasn’t meant for me.”In the caption accompanying her Reel, Shobhaa wrote, “I spent 900 rupees on the ticket, 260 rupees on bhel, and close to 4 hours wondering why i was watching a movie which had multiple set pieces randomly strung together. I mean…come on …the dwarf? Camel’s milk? A menacing villain who stitches sexy bralets for his “love” ?”‘Mirzapur: The Movie’, which released on September 4, is the big-screen continuation of the popular crime franchise. The original series premiered on Amazon Prime Video in 2018 and has completed three seasons.Produced by Amazon MGM along with Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel Entertainment, the film brings back several familiar faces from the series, including Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Rasika Dugal, Shweta Tripathi, Divyenndu, Harshita Gaur, Shriya Pilgaonkar, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Rajesh Tailang. Jeetendra Kumar and Abhishek Banerjee have also joined the ensemble cast.
