Movie Review: Ab Aani Cd (Marathi)

Producers- Abhayanand Singh, Akshay Bardapurkar, Arvind Reddy, Krishna Persaud and Piiyush Singh

Director- Milind Lele

Star Cast- Vikram Gokhale, Satyali Sanjay, Akshay Tanksale, Subodh Bhave, Lokesh Gupte,Sagar Talashikar,Seema Deshmukh, Sarvarui Lohokare, Sakshi Satish and Amitabh Bachchan in a Sp App

Genre- Social

Rating- ***

Engrossing Tale!

Jyothi Venkatesh

AB Aani CD revolves around the 75-year-old Chandrakant Deshpande aka CD, (Vikram Gokhale) who stays with his two sons, their wives and his grand children in Pune. It has been a while since he retired. As his wife (Neelima Kulkarni), who is shown only ion the portrait hung in his house passed away a few years ago, loneliness has got the better of him and he has to combat with not only old age but also humiliation at the hands of his daughters in law.

Even as Deshpande wishes for is to die peacefully and get reunited with his wife in the afterlife, his grandson and granddaughter conspire to make things better for him in his own house and a miracle happens when all of a sudden Deshpande receives a letter from none other than Amitabh Bachcham requesting him to come for a get together in Allahabad for a school students reunion.

The last time we have seen the titular titans together in the same film was way back thirty years ago in Agneepath. Big B featured in a cameo for a song in the Marathi film Akka, which had been produced by Amitabh Bachchan’s make up man Deepak Sawant.

Your first reaction when you see the film is that the plot is just a rip off of The Bengali short film Borunbabur Bondhu, of a retiree seen as a burden by family members suddenly getting respect when an important personality, a friend from his younger days, decides to call on him.

Though the film has been made on a very flimsy premise, it is the performance of not only Vikram Gokhale as the retiree drawing teacher but also that of Akshay Tanksale who plays his grandson Sunny which elevate the film to greater heights. Sakshi who plays his granddaughter Shravni endears herself to you though she has a miniscular role. Subodh Bhave, who seems to be a permanent fixture in each and every film in Marathi these days including Vijeta and Amitabh Bachchan make an impact despite playing cameos. Sayali Sanjeev has been wasted in a role as Gargi, an event manager which does not at all give her any scope to prove her talent.

Though the screenplay leaves a lot to be desired, director Milind Lele has succeeded in making an engrossing film which will make you have second thoughts about the way we tend to treat our senior citizens, without setting out to preach, though it is difficult to digest the fact that Amitabh Bachchan who plays himself in the film does not mind his signature being forged  by the agency which has been employed by him and agrees to feign that Vikram Gokhale is indeed his old school mate when he is convinced by the agency’s head to play up.

On the whole, to sum up, AB Aani CD is a film which sets out to bring a smile on your lips even as it discusses how senior citizens are being ill treated in our society