The latest offering by Dibakar Banerjee begins on a brilliant note with a realistic road-rage sequence making you recall the director’s excellent work in his initial projects as Khosla Ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and LSD. The film, then makes a very fine progression remaining engaging as well as unpredictable in the next 20 minutes introducing its basic premise and the characters. Plus, the first scene coming again with a different POV (point of view), further raises the expectation of something great coming ahead breaking the set norms.
However, post these initial promises, SUNDEEP AUR PINKY FARAAR moves on to a very familiar, routine path wherein a upper-class girl has to run-away with an unknown middle-class boy, a car driver in this case, to save her life (or their lives to be precise). So, as it progresses, the film fails to fulfil the promises in terms of novelty of content, but still successfully manages to keep you involved and entertained through its execution and Parineeti Chopra in particular. Parineeti simply owns the film, making a kill, even with her simple no-makeup look wearing the normal glasses.
Arjun Kapoor is sincere and provides good support to the girl as her only hope, but the narration actually holds your interest through Parineeti along with Raghubir Yadav and Neena Gupta playing the sweet middle-aged couple leading the entire film. Besides, it’s the writing that never makes you feel, you are watching an old tale retold in a different manner adding various layers of caste-divide, gender discrimination, money scams, cyber-crimes, fake passport rackets and more in the script.
What also works in the favour of the film are the smart insertions like reverse gender names given to the lead characters (with Arjun named as Pinky and Parineeti as Sandeep Kaur), references of educated senior citizens easily getting trapped in money-scams, influential people helping in border crossing and more. The dialogues also deserve praises with lines such as “Why are you all never happy?” and a specific scene of Neena narrating her experience of fights with her husband in a party.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t remain the same in the final 40 minutes leading to a very strange, unconvincing and an awkward kind of climax unlike a Dibakar Banerjee film. In fact, all through the marriage procession and dance sequences towards the end, I was wondering, is this really his film and his approved culmination?
Overall, SANDEEP AUR PINKY FARAAR has nothing fresh to offer in terms of subject or storyline. The film has been shot well along with appreciable work by the writing department and Anu Malik in the title song. But it frankly becomes an above average watch, just because of Parineeti Chopra alone and no-one else. Personally, I found her looking more beautiful than ever before in many simple sequences and too without any glamorous make-over.
Coming to an interesting angle of similarities, SANDEEP AUR PINKY FARAAR has many uncanny resemblances to 2018 released English film THE WEDDING GUEST.
Starting from a similar point, it also follows the same escape route of a girl with an unknown boy, staying in a hotel for a while and then the boy arranging for her fake passport to save her life. Here the girl is Radhika Apte (making many bold moves in a scene) and the boy is Dev Patel. An above average film directed by Michael Winterbottom, it doesn’t have any forced subplots like of a landlord couple but has an exciting link with Pakistan in its initial moments. The film was available on Amazon Prime a few months back but has been taken off. At present it can be seen with Pay Per View option at Youtube and Google Play. Wonder why many haven’t mentioned it in their reviews of Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar?
Rating : 3 / 5 (including an additional 0.5 for Parineeti’s dead-gorgeous looks and her impressive act)
Note : The film is streaming on Amazon Prime
