Sanju isn’t a family drama, Hirani offers wholesome entertainment to the viewers. He doesn’t use songs, dialogues to excite the audience or draw them to cinema halls. Nothing appears out of nowhere, just flows with the film.

“Sanju” is not a particularly engaging film because it stretches too long and resorts to melodrama over substance, but Bollywood also lost the opportunity to look at one of its own with a neutral lens and tell his story honestly.

Sanju is Ranbir Kapoor and Vicky Kaushal’s film. Both actors pull even the flawed parts of the film together, and neatly wrap the histrionics with flavour and variety. Sanju is an entertaining film, and has all the elements of a blockbuster — but one wishes the honesty and nuance went beyond just the performances.

Sanju is a definite blockbuster. It will work wonders for Ranbir Kapoor and Vicky Kaushal in particular. It will also boost the image of Sanjay Dutt in the public eye, which will help in Dutt’s future career. It can easily cross the Rs. 250-crore mark in India. It shouldn’t be a surprise if it even joins the 300-crore club, making it one of the biggest blockbusters of Hindi cinema!! Its business in multiplexes will be HUGE.

Sanju started off on a dissonant note for me, it took a long while to settle down in its world of excesses. The caricaturish feel, the slapstick tone, the garish colours, the kitschy backdrops and in the midst of it, manipulative scenes like the one juxtaposing Dutt’s innocent kids next to the rabble-rousing reactions against him on television news and a shrill Sonam Kapoor yelling aloud for a missing mangalsutra.

Sanju is the fawning biopic of Sanjay Dutt that the trailer warned us about. It promises complexity and psychological acuity. Until a point, it appears to be on track to creating a nuanced portrait of controversy’s favourite child – but then it plummets into unquestioning and misty-eyed reverence.