Mickey Virus is 2013 Hindi Thriller comedy released on October 25, 2013 and written & directed by Saurabh Varma. Mickey Virus is produced by DAR Motion Pictures in association with Trilogic Digital Media Limited & Awesome Films Pvt. Ltd. The film features Manish Paul, Elli Avram, Manish Choudhary, Puja Gupta, and Varun Badola as main characters. The film got positive reviews on its release.
The up-tempo comic cyber-thriller “Mickey Virus” is not without antecedents. This likable new Bollywood youth comedy about a close knit group of hacker/slacker screw-ups in New Delhi owes a fair amount to both “3 Idiots,” the 2009 Aamir Khan film about students at the Indian Institute of Technology, and to “Delhi Belly,” a 2011 gross-out comedy (Bollywood’s first) that was set in a notably grubby version of the same milieu. In India, where the pic opened to decent but unspectacular box-office over the weekend, it is also being compared with the hit 2012 comedy “Vicky Donor.”
But while it’s not really anything new, “Mickey Virus” feels fresh, wit a pervasive no-sweat attitude. The leading players are all brand new to movie acting: Popular TV host Manish Paul (who could be Johnny Knoxville’s Hindu kid brother) has the tile role as a genius hacker recruited by the police, reality TV star Elli Avram is his dream-girl love interest, and gifted snarler Puja Gupta is his “tomboy” hacker-chick pal (a la Alison Pill as the crabby drummer in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”). That all three of these novice actors give such relaxed and confident performers is a credit to the movie’s first-time writer-director, former marketing specialist Saurabh Varma.
The up-tempo comic cyber-thriller “Mickey Virus” is not without antecedents. This likable new Bollywood youth comedy about a close knit group of hacker/slacker screw-ups in New Delhi owes a fair amount to both “3 Idiots,” the 2009 Aamir Khan film about students at the Indian Institute of Technology, and to “Delhi Belly,” a 2011 gross-out comedy (Bollywood’s first) that was set in a notably grubby version of the same milieu. In India, where the pic opened to decent but unspectacular box-office over the weekend, it is also being compared with the hit 2012 comedy “Vicky Donor.”
But while it’s not really anything new, “Mickey Virus” feels fresh, wit a pervasive no-sweat attitude. The leading players are all brand new to movie acting: Popular TV host Manish Paul (who could be Johnny Knoxville’s Hindu kid brother) has the tile role as a genius hacker recruited by the police, reality TV star Elli Avram is his dream-girl love interest, and gifted snarler Puja Gupta is his “tomboy” hacker-chick pal (a la Alison Pill as the crabby drummer in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”). That all three of these novice actors give such relaxed and confident performers is a credit to the movie’s first-time writer-director, former marketing specialist Saurabh Varma.
