Within two minutes of Raksha Bandhan’s opening, you might be confused: is that this 2022, or 1962? A movie that includes a person with 4 youthful sisters, pondering of just one factor, How To Get Them ‘Married Off’, and the extent he has to go to that finish, is the main target of ‘Raksha Bandhan’.
It’s not as should you do not need brothers who’re fully dedicated to their sisters’ welfare at the moment. Sibling love has at all times been a powerful component in Hindi cinema. But each the best way the plot performs out, and much more importantly, how it’s handled, pushes us again in time, and never in a salutory method.
Lala Kedarnath (Akshay Kumar) runs his ‘chaat-ki-dukaan’ in Chandni Chowk with a solo USP: all expectant girls who eat his ‘gol-gappas’ will ship sons. Boom. There goes your first gong; your jaw drops. This is only the start, in fact. Within seconds, Lalaji waltzes into his home, ensconced in a slender gali, labeling his single sisters by their bodily traits: one is chubby, the opposite is darkish, the third is a hoyden; solely the oldest, the ‘achcha bacchcha’ (good lady) is of course the one one who’s truthful and demure. Nope, not kidding.
So, that is what we get. Lalaji negotiating the ‘burden’ of his ‘unbyaahi behens’ on the one hand, and on the opposite, attempting to stability his filial duties together with his personal needs. A childhood sweetheart (Bhumi Pednekar), ready within the wings, her loudmouth father (Neeraj Sood) hovering. When there are marriages to be organized with money and sort altering arms, there should be marriage brokers (Seema Pahwa). And how can dowry deaths be far behind?
I’m undecided what made me extra uncomfortable — the mothballed plot detailing, the contrivances, the high-pitched melodrama which was half and parcel of films we thought we had deep-sixed many years again; or the conviction that low-rent household dramas, with their uneasy mixture of humor and crassness, massively standard at one time, is the best way out for a beleaguered Bollywood.
Lalaji being a lot older than the ladies he’s surrounded by, is given a cause after we are effectively into the movie, resulting in extra sniffles. A funeral offers everybody an opportunity to have cry. Finally, as soon as everybody on display screen has been wrung out of the final tear, just a few rays of positivity seem. Remember the usual methodology used to shove in a shard of progressiveness effectively after the movie had bludgeoned us with its saccharine? Here too, as soon as the three-fourth mark is safely over, after the lack of a younger lady and, look ahead to it, a kidney, the movie abruptly turns into a beacon for women to face on their very own ft, and struggle the evils of dowry .
Well, hurrah, however this better-late-than-never change of coronary heart appears like a calculated after-thought, to maintain the carping so-called progressives completely happy after the supposedly conventional sorts have had their fill.
What retains us going, in as a lot because it does, is absolutely the dedication that Akshay shows in his function of ‘bada bhaiyya’, not slipping out of his character even as soon as. The women aren’t too dangerous both, at any time when they get an opportunity to get in a phrase edgewise. When they’re proven to be their very own individuals, proudly owning their measurement and shade, the movie shifts welcome gears. You want there was extra of this.
You find yourself asking, is that this the one method that the ‘bhaiyya mere, rakhi ka bandhan toh nibhaana’ vibe could be top-lined for right this moment’s audiences?
Raksha Bandhan
Raksha Bandhan film solid: Akshay Kumar, Bhumi Pednekar, Sadia Khatib, Sahejmeen Kaur, Neeraj Sood, Sahil Mehta
Raksha Bandhan film director: Aanand L Rai
Raksha Bandhan film ranking: 1.5 stars
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
