‘Simmba’ Critics Review: Ranveer’s Energy Is the Only Saving Grace

Is it a thumbs up or a thumbs down from the critics?

Film: Simmba
Director: Rohit Shetty
Cast: Ranveer Singh, Sara Ali Khan

Read excerpts from reviews of Simmba here:

Simmba falters badly when it tries to be a meaningful social drama with a message that rings out as loud as the background score... Ranveer Singh’s energy and flamboyance ensure that Simmba appears more engaging than it often is, and Ajay Devgn’s well-timed cameo rescues the film from being a write-off. Simbba is all about its male movie stars. Sara Ali Khan has fewer scenes than some of the other characters, including Siddharth Jadhav as a member of Simmba’s posse. The movie has no use for her Shagun – so much for being on the side of women. 

Nandini Ramnath, Scroll

Singh’s an easy choice to play Simmba. Grinning sheepishly from under his whiskers, he completes the small town cop with just the right accent. That he has a winning comic timing helps a lot but even when the film takes a preachy turn, he hangs in there and ensures his character responds to the situations as earnestly as possible... It’s not a film that will encourage one to rethink fundamental theories or alter societal thought, even though it aspires to be at one point. But it’s surely a masala entertainer that packs in laughs, drama, dishooms and a lot more — now that’s more than you can expect for a multiplex ticket.  

Kunal Guha, Mumbai Mirror

Like most rape-and-revenge melodramas, Simmba uses the heinous crime as a dishonest hash-tag; it is designed to exploit the current mood of a nation that often lets movies be its moral science textbooks... The most disheartening part about Simmba is its bipolar pursuit of relevance. The setup was the film; there was no need to embrace the guileless-sermon path. Just letting Singh play the fool, without hindrance, might have finally lent credence to the Rohit Shetty School of non-storytelling. A goofy, lighthearted spoof – or at least a lighter sense of self-importance – might have sufficed. I will perhaps never understand the obsession of mainstream filmmakers to pack as many genres as possible into a single movie. The shift in tone is almost always jarring.  

Rahul Desai, Film Companion

(Source: Scroll, Mumbai Mirror, Film Companion)