Arshad Warsi can create an air of levity around anybody but Vir Hirani’s stiff screen presence as Pritam Parkar has no vibe to match his peevish, pitiable Pedro Gonsalves, observes Sukanya Verma.
Key Points
- Rajkumar Hirani’s Pritam And Pedro is a six-episode OTT series attempting a buddy comedy on cybercrime, but it is described as ‘staggeringly sloppy and staid’.
- Vir Hirani is completely out of his depth and lacks the screen presence to complement Arshad Warsi’s comedic timing.
- The plot involves a technologically challenged cop, Pedro (Arshad Warsi), and a computer whiz, Pritam (Vir Hirani), teaming up to solve a missing politician’s kid case in North Goa.
As filmmakers, Rajkumar Hirani’s cheerful spin on social issues and Avinash Arun Dharware’s moody, gritty slices of life could not be more different. One would not think of them as collaborators but that’s exactly what they are on Pritam And Pedro, a buddy comedy about a pair of chalk and cheese individuals joining hands against the masterminds of cybercrime.
Having watched all of its six staggeringly sloppy and staid episodes, perhaps they are better off staying in their own lanes.
Hirani’s Vision and Execution
As the creator, co-writer, producer, editor and father of one of Pritam And Pedro‘s titular heroes, Rajkumar Hirani dons a lot of hats and tries to bring his rosy outlook to a premise hinged on thrill and danger.
What comes through is an objectivity bereft launchpad for his son who is completely out of his depth in a role that needed someone to complement Arshad Warsi’s ironic humour. Arshad can create an air of levity around anybody but Vir Hirani’s stiff screen presence as Pritam Parkar has no vibe to match his peevish, pitiable Pedro Gonsalves.
More than two decades ago when they posed as father-son for Munnabhai MBBS‘s end credits scene, the Circuit-Short Circuit punchline felt both cute and comic. But an entire OTT series around this one-sided equation is pushing it too far.
Never saw anything by Avinash Arun (Killa, School of Lies, Three of Us, Paatal Lok) that I didn’t like but there’s neither vision nor visual appeal in the cinematographer and director’s new work.
Plot and Premise
Based on cyber investigations virtuoso Amit Dubey’s books Hidden Files and Return of the Trojan Horse, Pritam And Pedro scores on relevance. Building on the prevailing paranoia that comes with excessive dependency on technology and its exploitation through instances of digital tampering and internet abuse, the show aspires to show both the advantages and misappropriation of its knowledge.
As fascinating that sounds, the shabbily-adapted material does not make for memorable viewing.
Set in North Goa, crime branch cop Pedro (Arshad Warsi) is dispatched to a cyber cell as a punishment for someone else’s boo-boo. When a politician’s (Satyadeep Mishra) kid goes missing, the technologically challenged Pedro sees an opportunity to reclaim his old job by solving the case with the help of computer whiz Pritam (Vir Hirani).
The latter is desperately looking for his grandpa’s stolen tape recorder carrying an old recording of his late grandma’s voice, which Pedro promises to find in exchange for his tech-savvy services.
Narrative Flaws and Performances
A prolonged cat and mouse game leads to its dishevelled antagonist Vikrant Massey and his done-to-death sneer. There’s a Doordarshan-era simplicity to their mind games but for the use of expletives that sound most unnatural in the Hirani way of things.
One gets emotions, another gets machines, it’s a fairly fun idea marred by a monotonously written motive insisting on extra-marital affairs as the root cause of all crimes.
Every investigation leans on someone cheating on their partner but most bizarre is when reaching late for class snowballs in one man’s suicide, another’s ruin and still another’s vendetta.
Arshad Warsi holds fort even when the show sidelines Pedro’s daddy guilt and strained marriage (to Mona Singh in a blink and miss role) and treats him like a sad sack solely there to distract us from Vir’s limitations while Massey snarls, Rajesh Sharma hams and Hirani favourites Sanjay Dutt, Boman Irani along with cricketer Virendra Sehwag show up in cameos that are as forgettable as this series.
Pritam And Pedro is streaming on JioHotstar.
