Rarely come films that take you on a journey of deep thoughts and make you ponder on the very being of cinema in today's times. Mr Joe B Carvalho is one such film. It makes you question as to how a film can be worse than the weakest attempt of any first year film school student? How blinded can an actor be to agree upon starring in this film? How drastic can the change be in translation from script to film (that's if at all the script was half decent in the first place)? Worse still, how can s/he possibly promote after having seen the final cut?
Joe B Carvalho that shares spot with Sholay 3D in the first week of the year 2014 is poll apart from the greatest film of all times. The only good that possibly comes out of this film is that it makes you realize the worth of all those bad films that you must've spent your money on.
A wannabe Steve Martin of Pink Panther, detective Mr Joe B Carvalho lives a life of oddity. He has a blind mother who he has never made realize that she is blind, a career that's been discovering the newest fathomable lows and a once upon a time girlfriend who he broke up with only for his imbecility. Along comes a case of a lifetime, that of finding Nina Khurana (Karishma Kotak) who run away with her servant Ramlal. In order to unearth her already known whereabouts, Carvalho finds himself amidst the dubious plans of bad boy Carlos (Jaaved Jaffrey) who is on a wanted list of inspector Shantipriya Phadnis (Soha Ali Khan). How Carvalho with all his buffoonery goes ahead and creates a chaos is what follows through the rest of the plot.
The idea of comedy of errors is all so passe especially when done with such grave foolishness. First time director Samir Tewari makes a complete mess of what could at least be one of those mindless slapstick capers that find takers amidst the audience. Right from the acting to the situations, the introduction of the characters, the narrative skills, the comic timing, and the gags, there's absolutely no redeemable factor in this film.
It's utterly disappointing to see actors with great caliber like Jaaved Jaffrey, Arshad Warsi and Soha Ali Khan lending themselves to a film as incredulously outrageous as Mr Joe B Carvalho.
The movie fails to please even in the production and sound department. Not only are the production values extremely low as if it were a shoddy B-grade film, even the music is atrocious.
To sum it up, despite having actors like Arshad Warsi, Jaaved Jaffrey and Soha Ali Khan Mr Joe B Carvalho fails miserably and is devoid of any reason for one to watch this film. Best avoided.
