Supposed to be the most ambitious film of singer-turned actor-director Gippy Grewal, Shava Ni Girdhari Lal also remains the weakest amongst his three directorial projects to date.
Completely relying upon his lead role with no major supporting characters in the script, the film features six actresses of the Punjabi film industry namely Neeru Bajwa, Himanshi Khurana, Payal Rajput, Tanu Grewal, Surilie Gautam, and Sara Gurpal, with a sweet cameo of Yami Gautam. The actresses perform well as per the need of the subject, but Gippy’s performance of a simple villager looking for a girl to marry, unfortunately, remains a forced act throughout the two hours of duration. One continuously realises he is making a sincere effort with an accent, which remains the key reason the character is unable to establish any emotional relationship with the viewers.
Besides, in his third directorial venture, Gippy yet again comes up with a clever adaptation of a cult Hindi film that also didn’t work in its initial release. Gippy’s first film Ardaas (2016) took its basic story idea from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Bawarchi, with the servant turned into a teacher visiting a village. His second, Ardaas Karaan (2019) again took its seed from Mukherjee’s Anand with the lead character suffering from a terminal illness.
In the present film, Gippy follows the basic story idea of a simpleton trying to impress multiple girls in desperation to get married, facing continuous rejection because of various reasons. In the end, he sends a letter to each one of them, inviting them to a particular event where he expresses his heart out with an emotional speech, explaining his reasons for falling in love with all. This is the exact idea behind Raj Kapoor’s cult classic Mera Naam Joker that also didn’t work upon its release in 1970. However, while the RK film later became successful in its re-runs and video market, Shava Ni Girdhari Lal is not going to meet any such outcome in the upcoming years, for sure.
The film keeps moving on a single note tone with no twists and turns making an impact post the first 20 minutes. But it has a bright silver lining in the dark clouds, in its soundtrack, offering many pleasing and superfine tracks coming one after the other like a musical. Interestingly, the title track of the film has been penned and sung by Satinder Sartaj, an appreciable gesture by Gippy. But I was also surprised to see no radical voices raised against the track titled ‘Fateh’.
On the whole, Shava Ni Girdhari Lal can easily be skipped, and its soundtrack is going to be the only saving grace if you opt for it.
Rating : 2 / 5
(Streaming on Amazon Prime)
Bobby Sing
(bobbytalkscinema.com)
NOTE : The article was first published in THE FREE PRESS JOURNAL Newspaper (Mumbai Edition) on 29th January 2022.
