Movie Review: Welcome To Sajjanpur
Film Critric: Goher Iqbal Punn
Producers: Ronnie Screwala and Zarina Mehta
Director: Sheyam Benegal
Cast: Shreyas Talpade, Amrita Rao, Ila Arun and Divya Dutta
Sheyam Benegal offers the viewers to watch his outing, ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’, which hit the screens all over this Friday. Laced with simplicity, the film is a rustic saga set in rural India. With a powerful story to grab the audience, ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’ is a strapping product, which the director narrates it very brilliantly on the celluloid.
This offering of UTV Spot Boy (a production house run by Ronnie Screwala of UTV Motion Pictures and Zarina Mehta) pours the light onto the unseen Indian villages where postmen and letters are still the only mode of communication. The place called Sajjanpur is what where power cuts appear normal and the people like to travel on bicycles. The movie drags you to a hamlet which is swathed with the mixed characters: a letter writer, a power-hungry goon, an eunuch, a short tempered army man and his widowed daughter-in-law, a compounder, a house wife whose husband, working in Mumbai, hasn’t showed up since four years. These characters are not new to us rather we have witnessed and seen them in our lives.
The movie, though carries drama, nonetheless it does not get your mind heavy. But it tries to relax you in full.
Mahadev (Shreyas Talpade) is one of the few literate men of the village. He likes to be a novelist, but makes a living by writing-reading letters of all the illiterate villagers sitting next to the post office. It is the art of writing convincing letters that makes him popular with the village bumpkins. Mahadev knows his abilities very well. So he begins using his talent to manipulate people with amusing and, at times, not such funny results. There emerge many fascinating encounters between him and the villagers. Kamla (Amrita Rao) is Mahadev’s childhood classmate. She is also his crush. She is married. But Mahadev wants her back in his life so he goes ahead to play his cards to do so.
The film loses some values also i.e. the movie should have been without a song because the film does not need to have a song into the narrative.
The screenplay and dialogues by Ashok Mishra attract a lot. The music by Shantanou Moitra does not have any scope in the movie and also is below average. Sheyam Benegal delivers the goods on screen very creatively. Full marks to him. Shreyas Talpade is extremely brilliant and enacts the job superbly by putting life in the character. Amrita Rao appeals hugely. Yashpal Sharma, Ila Arun, Divya Dutta and others register impacts too.
On the whole, ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’ raises your spirits. An interesting carnival to watch.
RS Rating: 3.5/5
- The reviewer is a popular and experienced Bollywood and Indian TV Analyst and has a good rapport with Bollywood and Indian TV Fraternities. He also shares good rapport with the celebs of these swanky worlds. You may write to him at the e-mails: goheriqbal@yahoo.co.uk, goher.punn@yahoo.com and bollywood.tv.analyst@gmail.com
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