REVIEW BONUS (Marathi)

Director- Saurabh Bhave

Star Cast- Gashmeer Mahajani, Pooja Sawant , Dr. Mohan Agashe and Jaywant Wadkar.

Genre- Social

Rating-***

Fairly Enjoyable Film!

Jyothi Venkatesh

Aditya Deodhar (Gashmeer Mahajani) is the millennial grandson of a successful and cool industrialist (Dr. Mohan Agashe) and they live in Nashik. While the Sr. Deodhar  wants to give bonus to all his employees generously every year, his haughty grandson Aditya has some radical ideas. He wants to scrap the bonus and save the company some money but Grandpa is against this. , Grandpa challenges Aditya to try and survive a month in Mumbai on the average salary their workers get.

Aditya accepts the challenge immediately and finds a house in Worli Koliwada where he has to face the struggles of visiting a stinking common toilet that’s outside the house, water issues, allergies, and even illness. Despite his hesitance, the area folks welcome him and he finds a friend in Minal (Pooja Sawant). After his apartment floods and he loses his job as a storekeeper in a shoe shop, ( on a meagre salary of Just Rs 4000 a month), Aditya is ready to concede defeat and return home, but Minal, convinces him to change his outlook and give his challenge another try, though it is evident that Aditya loses the challenge and the grandfather wins it.

Performance wise it looks like it is just a vehicle to project Gashmeer Mahajani right from the first frame to the last, though to his credit, I must accede that Gashmeer who is shown as a guy with an attitude in the first frame who asks the repairer to repair his AC Unit and come by evening or he will buy a brand new AC as he cannot sleep without the AC on tucks in a neat performance as the guy who turns over a new leaf. Pooja Sawant is passable and decorative .Sadly, the chemistry between Minal and Aditya is hardly there and also the love story has not been shown to blossom organically after the initial spat that Aditya has with her. Dr Mohan Agashe has hardly any scene to his credit and he has been wasted. Jaywant Wadkar leaves his own mark albeit in a small cameo role.

On the whole, the wafer thin story which seems like a rehash from Namak Haram partly, sets out to present a slice of life from the contemporary society and is a fairly enjoyable film, which can be watched on Amazon Prime Video since its release on February 28 2020 was scuttled because of the COVID19 epidemic