‘CTRL’ Netflix Movie Review - A Major Disappointment from Vikramaditya Motwane

It's always depressing to watch filmmakers, who have a lot of talent, succumbing to a genre's limitations. Genres come with some built-in rules that must be strictly followed. They are like scissors clipping the wings of imagination. Vikramaditya Motwane is the latest victim of artistic imprisonment. With CTRL, he confines himself to the elements of thriller. Motwane faithfully checks the boxes, making the movie one of the most painful experiences of the year. He must have thought he was breaking some creative boundary by adopting an unusual form: Telling a story through computer or mobile screens and cameras - a technique that can be observed in films like Searching, Unfriended, and C U Soon. This is what happens when filmmakers get seduced by superficial, shiny tricks - when they confuse gimmicks with great art. Motwane tells his story from within the confines of digital screens, and his story is utterly unoriginal. The opening scenes are so cutesy that we find it hard to believe we are watching a film made by someone who once gave us Lootera and Udaan. Where is that Motwane who used to be so attuned to his characters that the drama exploded on the screen with vigor? Nowadays, the Motwane we love can only be seen here and there in glimpses. He momentarily comes out of the dull narrative of CTRL during the final moments when the story is no longer bound to the shallow, attention-seeking narrative device, and it only further raises your frustration. You scream, "This is what Motwane could have given us if he were not so absorbed by technological stunts!"

The opening scenes of CTRL establish the kind of hand-holding and underlining Motwane would do for 1 hour and 39 minutes. We meet Nella (Ananya Panday) and Joe (Vihaan Samat) when they pose for a group picture during their college days. Well, the cameraman reveals that he is making a video, which elicits laughter from the subjects. Despite this being a group video, Motwane, from the beginning, locks our gaze on Joe and Nella as if he doesn't trust us to sort them out from the others. You suspect that the cameraman in the movie must have placed everyone in the frame. It's Motwane who zooms in on the main characters. He follows traditional Bollywood rules, which is why he hits us with a romantic song. Why put songs in a movie like CTRL? It's jarring - it further disconnects you from the events. Motwane, though, not only shows the progression of Nella and Joe's personal and professional relationship, but he also displays cute comments, which are meant to be the thoughts of the audience. Even after such a hokey start, you remain with the film because of Motwane's reputation. You keep telling yourself that he surely must have some wild trick up his sleeves, which will probably be revealed in a few minutes. Prepare yourself for disappointment. The clichés keep on building up. On the occasion of their 5th anniversary, Nella decides to surprise Joe by crashing into one of his meetings, and we begin to suspect that it's she who will end up getting surprised. A comment, "Why am I scared?" pops up as a forewarning. I don't know what's more repulsive: Motwane putting his energy into a banal film or him treating us like dumb kids.

It's not a spoiler to say that Nella catches Joe kissing another girl named Shonali (Kamakshi Bhat). The heartbreak leads Nella to take a step toward changing her digital library. Nella downloads the titular AI software to erase Joe's image from all the videos and pictures. She chooses a flirty AI assistant and names him Allen (Aparshakti Khurana). Allen can manage your schedule, make your video go viral, and dispense remarks like, "Did I pronounce your name correctly? The spelling is A-N-G-E-L, right?" Allen initially sticks out as a catalyst for exposition. Before deleting Joe from the image, he asks Nella if she wants to share her opinion. The details - the backstories - she delivers are all schmaltzy and serve the plot. The writers Motwane and Avinash Sampath (Sumukhi Suresh has penned the dialogues) provide us with information that merely helps the story's gears to be in motion. No causal side remarks are allowed to emerge. Some photos from which Joe gets deleted look absurd without his presence (take the one where Nella is sitting on Joe's shoulders, for instance). Yet, neither Nella nor Allen make any jokey remark on this subject. It's as if they are not noticing this amusing, um, side effect. Someone mentions that Joe was the backbone of NJOY (it's the name of the couple's YouTube-like channel). Joe apparently was responsible for content strategy, shoot, edit... "he used to do everything for her." So after the breakup, when Nella creates that comeback/breakup video, who edits it? Is Allen responsible for the editing? If yes, how did this process happen? Moreover, did Allen come up with the entire idea, or did Nella, too, contribute something to the script?

CTRL isn't very curious about anything that doesn't contribute to the story's development. The movie offers nothing but routine professionalism combined with earnest intentions. Motwane executes the basic thriller elements competently, and this simple competence fills him with satisfaction. He is either consciously lowering his filmmaking standard, or he doesn't really know why his fans fell in love with him in the first place. Or maybe Motwane must have taken into account the high praise that's given to mediocrity nowadays and must have thought that the audience have lost their good taste. The kind of melodrama and hand-holding you find in CTRL insults your intelligence. Motwane, alas, has created one of those bad films with good intentions. The message in CTRL has to do with our dependence on technology, social media, and gadgets. By blindly accepting terms and conditions, we end up digging our graves. The points, at first, are made through clicks on specific buttons and cuts to AI's creepy face, but then Motwane thinks we will not be able to grasp his intentions, so he gives us a video where Joe basically delivers the movie's message. Motwane's anger, his frustration at the tech world, arises in the form of Joe's rant, which has to be the poorest decision the director has made since he spoiled Bhavesh Joshi Superhero (to an extent) with Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor's bland presence.

CTRL is your typical thriller containing a dumb character who simply raises problems for herself. Look at Nella using her laptop and not uninstalling the AI software even after learning all that information (what else can you expect from someone who thinks they need to give admin controls to software to do its task without their presence?). Also, a deepfake video looks so obviously fake that you are shocked that only a few people recognize its fakeness (these people - two or three of them - all exist in the realm of comments, which means all the human characters in CTRL are stupid creatures). Only towards the end, when CTRL changes its format, does it become something close to sensational. The drama comes to the surface with such an intense force that you again fall in love with Motwane. You get more pleasure from these moments than from memes and roast videos of Tanmay Bhat and the gang. Motwane spends a lot of time focusing on giving credibility to trivial embellishments like the command prompt interface. As a result, CTRL comes across as the work of someone who is more passionate about real-life tech than characters. Still, the last few minutes tell us that the Motwane you admire has not gone anywhere. Hopefully, next time, he will be front and center from the beginning to the end.

Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times