The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir: Film Review
Cast: Dhanush, Berenice Bejo, Erin Moriarty, Barkhad AbdiDirector: Ken Scott
The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir is a light and fluffy film which looks to the refugee crisis for inspiration, but strays from anything too serious.
Bollywood star Dhanush is Aja, a street performer and criminal in and around India, who dreams of escaping Mumbai and ends up in Paris. Meeting Moriarty's Marie in an IKEA store, there's an obvious connection between the pair.
But love is not to blossom properly under the Eiffel Tower after Aja ends up whisked away by accident, trapped in a refugee situation and then thrown into a bizarre orbit around Bejo's Nelly Marnay.
The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir is as slight and flouncy as they come.
It's clear its aims are about ensuring that Dhanush gets his time to shine in this European flight-of-fancy and he seizes on it with relish at every opportunity, exuding energy and generally mining each situation for as much infectious glee as he can muster.
So, it's no surprise that the rest of the film kind of feels inconsequential, and other characters feel underwritten, as the tropes of the various genres are hit, the romcom elements roasted and the bizarre comedy moments thrust into the world unexpectedly.
The end result is that The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir is as forgettable as it is fanciful fun. Its quirks just about stay on the right side of non-grating, but it's a slight victory that the cynical will dismiss and those after crowd-pleasing will lap up.
