In one of the opening scenes of this film, the main protagonist asks his wife what she has prepared for dinner. Bursting with lust, she comes close to him and displays her purposely waxed legs before saying, “Aaj dinner mein main hoon.” This is just a teaser of how disturbingly sexist Sourabh Shrivastava’s Fraud Saiyaan is.
From a Mamta Sharma-crooned song whose lyrics go like, “Touch kar le mujhko, mulayam badi hoon, chakh le mujhe, tere pichhe padi hoon” to the leading character bragging about impregnating a woman in a drunken state, there is a lot that is horribly wrong with this film.
Believe it or not, one of the final scenes has our hero forcing himself upon a widowed woman, an act that he justifies later by claiming that he is in love with her. Casual musical score plays out in the background during this scene what should ideally be called a ‘rape scene.’ Because hey, this is, after all, a comedy film and everything that is being shown on screen is to be taken lightly – even a rape.
Fraud Saiyaan is the story of Bhola Prasad Tripathi (Arshad Warsi), a conman who is married to multiple women. He has as many as 12 wives across Lucknow, Varanasi and Allahabad. In a surprising turn of events, he meets ML Chaurasia (Saurabh Shukla), the uncle of one of his wives, on a train to Varanasi.
While one expects Shukla’s entry to be the film’s turning point, it takes an absolutely bizarre route from here on to ultimately get trapped in a self-created coil. Even at 1 hour 50 minutes, Fraud Saiyaan takes ages to complete its runtime. By the interval, you, as a viewer, are certain that you have been on a pointless journey so far.
The fundamental problem with Fraud Saiyaan is that it features a conman who has an IQ less than that of a 6-year old. He thinks that he is too smart but we are never introduced to his clever antics. The women here are inexplicably dumb and it is only because of them that our main man comes across as intelligent in certain scenes. In this context, Maneesh Sharma’s Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl, starring Ranveer Singh in the lead role, was a much better take on the subject, despite all its flaws.
Fraud Saiyaan is a film where farts have been used as a comic tool and at most times, they turn out to be more effective than dialogues. I fail to understand why brilliant artists such as Warsi and Shukla would have chosen to participate in this dumb fest. I am going with a generous 1 star out of 5.
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