REVIEW: URF GHANTA

Producers- Mili Devendra Rai and Shashi Radheshyam

Director- Aayush Saxena

Star Cast- Jeetu Shivhare, Samridhi Chandola, Mohan Kapoor, Chitrashi Rawat, Rajendra Gupta, Sunita Rajwar, Mukesh S. Bhatt and Ravi Kishan

Genre- Social

OTT Platform- Shemaroo OTT

Lots of Old World Charm!

Rating- **

Jyothi Venkatesh

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Urf Ghanta is a warm and fuzzy drama that revolves around the life of a rotund middle aged guy called Ghanta (Jeetu Shivhare),who is on a quest to find his life partner but his world is turned upside down when he learns a startling truth about himself. In the process, he happens to find himself and learns to love himself.

The film will make you smile, laugh, cry and most importantly act as a much-needed hug in the form of a film and instantly remind you of the good old days of heartwarming films where we could enjoy the antics of Amol Palekar as the common man.

Jeetu Shivhare endears himself to the viewer as an earnest actor who gets into the skin of his role with the ease of a veteran and unfortunately his quota of problems never seem to come to an end right from the first frame when the film starts unfurling when he urinates while he is sleeping till the last frame when he is hauled up when he visits a brothel

Tough the film has a short duration of just around an hour and a half, there are scenes which seem to go on without an end and you get stifled at time when the film is on but you not only enjoy the travails of the fat young man who is 40 plus when he searches the nook and corner for a girl to get married but there are also times when you also start empathizing with the guy.

Chitrashi Rawat scores in her cameo appearance as a brothel girl Lolypop who is assigned the task of teaching him what sex is when he visits a brothel for the first time.

What on earth prompted an actor –M.P like Ravi Kishan to take up a cameo role in this film, that too as Lord Bholenath in the avatar of the common man beats me hollow.

To put simply in a nutshell, all that I can say is that he does not add any dimension to the film in terms of his role but looks like the producers have cast him only to add a star value to the film which otherwise boasts of only new and proven character artistes like Mohan Kapoor, Rajendra Gupta, Mahesh S. Bhatt etc.

While I should give credit to the incisive and sharp dialogues in the film by Jeetu Shivhare which also boasts of brilliant and soothing music by Parag Chhabra and Yash Kapoor , what is I find detestable is the attempt by the producers to plug in many producers quite blatantly like Dettol , Maggie, Colgate etc.

Finally, I would like to sum up the film by stating that it has a certain old world charm to it and it is certainly heartwarming to the core, though it is tacky, thanks to the low budget and lack of known stars to embellish the project