With a clunky title in the first place, wastes much of its initial bits in creating a romance between the middle-aged Keshav ( Akshay) and the sprightly Jaya ( Pednekar) , which derails as soon as the latter turns into a ‘nai-naveli dulhan’ and discovers that she has to be part of a ‘lota party’ at the crack of dawn to complete her ablutions.
If the conflict had stayed personal, this could have been something to watch. Because both Akshay who admits to looking his age, and Pednekar who steps into her second film pretty much like she did in her first ( the wonderful Dum Laga Ke Haisha) , spark well together. And the reason for the conflict, a basic human need, should have taken us down a new path in mainstream Bollywood cinema. If only the treatment hadn’t been so heavy handed, and bent upon underlining the obvious.
But the film is after something larger. It is after society. It is after culture. It is so busy pointing fingers at the Indians, good people but blinded by tradition of ‘jis aangan mein tulsi hai, usi mein shauchalaya kaise ban sakta hai’, who will still go out into the open, that it forgets that polemics make good academic papers. They do not necessarily make good films