Bhool Chuk Maaf Review: Gabbi Brightens Rao Kalam In Lighthearted, Pickled Up Film
At a time mainstream cinema is all gloss, sex, violence, and lawlessness, this could well have been an ideal family outing. Poor handling makes it an apology, time to its title ‘Bhool Chuk Maaf’. Do it for Rajkummar Rao.
Bhool Chuk Maaf
Starring: Rajkummar Rao, Wamiqa Gabbi, Raghubir Yadav, Vineet Kumar, Zakir Hussain, Seema Pahwa, Sudhir Mishra.
Diretion: Karan Sharma
This is Karan Sharma’s apology. It also turns out to be much about nothing. Probably the production house (Maddock Films) would have been better off showcasing the inelegantly sculpted product on the OTT platform. The choice may have garnered more views before the reviews hit social media. Even there, traffic is likely to be sparse.
Bollywood has its varied templates, including one for towns. ‘Sandeep aur Pinky Farar’, ‘Stree’, ‘Loop Lapeta’, ‘Judgmental Hai Kya’, ‘Fukrey’, etc., the list is listless and endless. Karan Sharma, the filmmaker, also is incharge of the story, screenplay and dialogues, and messes it up, letting go of a great opportunity to deal with the possibilities of a person being caught in a time wrap and suffocated in it on the eve of his wedding.
Given that it is for two hours (and even that seems weary), a film that essentially deals with a unique experience of this kind must essentially establish a connect with the viewer or at least inculcate a degree of curiosity. Karan fails. He takes nearly half the film’s running time to establish the characters.
We have Ranjan Tiwari (Rajkummar Rao) in Benares madly in love with Titli (Wamiqa Gabbi). Her dad Brij Mohan (Zakir Hussain) is not interested. He thus throws down the challenge that the marriage can happen if and only when the Ranjan gets a government job. This too must be in two months. The Tiwari side of the story has Sr Tiwari (Raghubir Yadav) and Mom (Seema Pahwa) who run a pickle-manufacturing unit. Ranjan has two hangers on in Kishan mama (Ishtiyak Khan) and Hari (Dheerendra Gautam), sister Keri (Pragati Mishra) and her suitor Sushil (Jay Thakkar). At Titli’s end, we have Dad (Jackie Hussain), Mom (Anubhav Fateh Puria), elder daughter (Poornima Shetty) and her husband (Himanshu Kohli).
Ranjan is the typical town guy, smart yet naive and clueless to the ways and means to find a government job. Karan has not heard of anything called the public service commission. They manage to connect with Bhagwan Das (Sanjay Mishra) who promises his shortcut for a heavy sum. After all the trials and challenges, Ranjan lands a job in the irrigation department and prepares for the wedding on the 30th. He wakes up only to realise it is the 29th. Caught unwittingly (a la the viewers), Ranjan‘s challenge is to move ahead to the next crucial day of his life. That is not happening, so is the film.
A quick walk to a staged finale and a preachy lecture at the end by Bhagwan Das, and the scenes where Ranjan is exploited by the Pandit (Vineeth Kumar), the tailor Naineesh Neel and the ineffective decorator (Amarjeet Singh) make for the remaining tiles in the tail.
An interesting idea gone away. Some amazing actors like Raghubir Yadav, Vineet Kumar, Zakir Hussain, Seema Pahwa, and Sudhir Mishra put in their characteristic flavour to flesh up the characters. As the sidekicks, both Ishtiyak Khan and Dheerendra Gautham are noteworthy. Wamiqa is often trying too much. Like Bhumi Pednekar in ‘The Royals’, she makes a huge effort to be convincing, in the face and loud. In contrast, Rajkummar Rao is revisiting the town-lad premise. He was flattering in ‘Sreekanth’ and ‘Mr and Mrs Mahi’, and is back in familiar territory. He holds the film together and induces an element of sanity.
At a time mainstream cinema is all gloss, sex, violence, and lawlessness, this could well have been an ideal family outing. Poor handling makes it an apology, time to its title ‘Bhool Chuk Maaf’. Do it for Rajkummar Rao.
