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By Joginder Tuteja, January 3, 2009 - 13:59 IST
MOVIE DETAILS
Cast: Shreyas Talpade, Amrita Rao, Ravi Kishan, Illa Arun, Yashpal Sharma, Ravi Jhankal
Director: Shyam Benegal
Producer: Ronnie Screwvala, Zarina Mehta
Music: Shantanu Moitra
Lyrics: Swanand Kirkire, Ashok Mishra
THE FILM
Welcome To Sajjapur doesn't really have a plot line per se. Nothing wrong with that since in current times, anything that makes for an exciting cinematic viewing works regardless of a film being plot driven or character driven. In case of Welcome To Sajjanpur, it's the characters that drive the film with one of them being, as the cliché goes, 'Sajjapur' itself. So far so good. However, things become repetitive after the film is half way through and in the end, it seems that there is nothing interesting to be told. What a pity since for a film that promised to move into the heart of the village and bring its characters alive; it just turns out to be half baked!
There are some individualistic characters and situations that stand out. Told from the point of view of Shreyas Talpade who is popular in Sajjanpur due to the 'emotions' that he gets alive through his writing in the letters that he writes for the villagers, Welcome To Sajjanpur has at least two characters that stand out. One is that of Yashpal Sharma, a henchman with a politician and another is Ravi Jhankal, who plays the part of a eunuch fighting an election. These two characters shine in each and every scene they appear and completely steal the show. Yashpal Sharma acts like only he can and though he is the villain of the piece here, you want to see more of him due to the intrinsic sense of humor that comes across through his dialogues and the way he delivers them.
On the other hand Ravi Jhankal, a regular with Shyam Benegal cinema, is simply endearing, especially so in one of his last sequences in the film where he bares his heart out about 'eunuch rights' in front of Shreyas Talpade. However, some of the other characters simply come and go without any reason and rhyme, most noticeable being Illa Arun whose entry is funny to begin with but later tends to irritate. Also, the lingo that she adopts is hard to decipher without an aid of subtitles. Surprisingly, Divya Dutta, who plays her daughter, is excellent in the three scenes that she gets but is completely underutilized.
Amrita Rao is sweet in her earlier scenes but as the film moves on, her tender sequences with Shreyas Talpade appear to be action replay. In fact it is around this time in the second half of the film that Welcome To Sajjapur starts loosing it's grip on the narrative. Not that the first half didn't have its fair share of boredom. A mime sequence comes with a right intention in the film's beginning but is placed for the sake of it with the sheer intention of conveying a message. Ravi Kishan-Rajeshwari Sachdev bring down the film's graph every time they appear while a couple of song sequences revolving around the socio-political state of the country act as true speed breakers.
What remains in the end is Shreyas Talpade's performance. The young man is just so perfect as a villager (who is hardly a simpleton though). A gray character with a fickle heart, he seems every bit like a 'thoda-bahaut-educated' youngster from a village. However, if not for him, Welcome To Sajjanpur barely passes muster as a one time watch that can be played on once but can't really be expected to stay with you for weeks in succession.
PACKAGING
Moser Baer makes an exception with this DVD (as it has done with all the titles that it has acquired from UTV) as it packages it rather smartly in a paper and plastic case.
DURATION
The film's duration is 128 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES
The DVD doesn't come with any special features
TECHNICAL DETAILS
- 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
- Subtitles in English
- Dolby Digital 5.1 and Stereo
PRICE
Rs. 99/=
CONCLUSION
Oh, the curse of good promos but not so good film strikes again in case of Welcome To Sajjanpur. UTV did very well by designing a series of teasers and full fledged promos for this Shyam Benegal film. Each of the actors was made to shoot for an independent promo that gave out the character sketch of each of them. They were indeed interestingly made but sadly, the film isn't half as exciting as the promos.
 
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