REVIEW: ATRANGI RE (Hindi)

Producer-Director- Aanand L. Rai

Star Cast- Akshay Kumar, Dhanush, Sara Ali Khan, Seema Biswas, Dimple Hayathi and Ashish Verma

Genre- Social

Platform of Release- Disney Plus Hotstar

Rating: ** (Two)

Partly Illogical & Partly Unbelievable!

Jyothi Venkatesh

Here’s a unique story at hand in a film in both Hindi and Tamil, an interesting team of actors, a refreshing soundtrack and some fine performances.

If you’re keen to watch a hatke musical love story, this could be your pick of the week. If you want to know how exactly the film is Atrangi, here’s the answer.

Suryavanshi (Sara Ali Khan) is married off to V Venkatesh Vishwanath Iyer aka Vishu (Dhanush), a senior medical student from Tamil Nadu, at the behest of her Naani (Seema Biswas).

However, she’s rather obsessed with Sajjad Ali Khan (Akshay Kumar), a magician. How this partly illogical and partly unbelievable story (Imagine a medical student taking his wife to his room in the hostel and dancing and drinking publicly with his cronies) unfolds gradually, taking unexpected turns along the way forms the crux of the story.

The film starts with Rinku on the run, being chased by a few hooligans. But she’s far from a damsel, but a feisty, bold and strong-headed girl who doesn’t give up too easily and is obstinate to the core.

While Rinku's dictatorial grandmother and uncles demand to know the name of the guy she’s been planning to elope with for years, she’s not willing to reveal his name just yet.

Enraged by her insolence, the naani abruptly instructs her uncles to abduct at random any unknown guy from outside their town and get Rinku married off to him right away, so that she ceases to be a burden to the family.

Vishu is soon to be engaged to his girlfriend Mandy aka Mandakini (Dimple Hayathi), who is the daughter of his college dean.

But as it turns out, he finds himself forcefully married to Rinku instead and how a la Ajay Devgn in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, he decides to unite Suryavanshi with Sajjad Ali but in the process gets distanced from his fiancée is what the film is all about.

The concept written by Himanshu is unique and complex, but at the same time one that is not easy to translate cinematically without a lot of challenges, and that’s where the storytelling falters.

What I like about the plot is that in most situations, the effort has been to keep the thread of humor intact.

The film also addresses the mental health issue without diving deeply into it too much.

As the magician Sajjad, Akshay Kumar gets a very limited scope, though his character is a very integral part of the story.

Ashish Verma as Vishnu’s friend Madhusudhan, lends great support and steadily brings in a good dose of comedy to an otherwise complicated story. Dimple Hayathi as Dhanush’s fiancé has hardly any role who the salt

Dhanush delivers a versatile performance and effectively conveys the many emotions his character Vishu goes through at different points in the film.

The actor is in brilliant form all throughout. It is Sara Ali Khan who puts her heart and soul into her role as Rinku, and delivers her performance with a lot of spunk and a great deal of conviction, though one should concede at the same time that in some sequences in the film, specifically some emotional scenes, a certain degree of restraint could have easily enhanced her performance and made it less dramatic and loud.

The otherwise brilliant actress Seema Biswas has been blatantly wasted with just a few scenes to her credit.

Cinematographer Pankaj Kumar has done a wonderful job of capturing the characters of the various cities distinctly like Sivan, Bihar and moves to Delhi and Madurai during the course of the story, adding to the look of the movie, while music director A.R. Rahman reaffirms his status quo as a composer unparalleled in the entertainment industry today, whether it is the South or for that matter Bollywood.

His background score adds to the drama, while his folk-classical-based soundtrack strikes a notable chord and has you tapping your feet to the catchy music, when you walk out of the theater.