Cinema Lessons #101: If you're remaking a film, tweak the story only if you think it will be better than the original.
Ujda Chaman Movie Review Rating: 2/5 Stars (Two stars)
Star Cast: Sunny Singh, Maanvi Gagroo, Saurabh Shukla, Karishma Sharma, Aishwarya Sakhuja, Sharib Hashmi
Director: Abhishek Pathak
What’s Good: The fact that I came out of my audi with all my hair intact!
What’s Bad: Loud, at your face, half-baked (just like Chaman’s hair), a very-long short length (120 minutes turning into ages)
Loo Break: Three songs, few of the sequences, climax, the entire movie
Watch or Not?: Only if you’re getting paid for it!
You know, Sunny Singh’s character isn’t cursed with premature balding, he’s majorly cursed for having two very dumb parents. Who the ef names their son as Chaman? The makers don’t stop here, they’ve given him a pet name as ‘Chomu’ because why not? So, Chaman is bald and because of that, we face ‘as many as the number of hair on our head’ useless hair references. From a street-side salon cleaning his shop full of hair to a guy trying to sell a comb to Chaman, all of this happens in the first ten minutes.
Chaman is a sad, virgin, horny, partly creepy and bald 30-year-old bachelor who is looking out for someone to get married with. All this is because a pundit in Chaman’s family has predicted, that he’ll die as a bachelor if he doesn’t get married by the age of 31. So, Chaman installs Tinder, Chaman keeps the display picture cropping his egghead, Chaman meets his match Apsara (Maanvi Gagroo), Chaman denies her because she’s fat, Chaman chu**** hai (tum nahi!), don’t be like Chaman.
Ujda Chaman Movie Review: Script Analysis
“Dilo ki baat karta hai zamana, mohabbat aaj bhi chehro se shuru hoti hai” – such a brilliant thought to revolve a story around. Danish J Singh takes a potentially good story originally written by Raj B. Shetty & messes all up. In order to tweak some aspects, he loses the charm and novelty factor the original had. The more you see the film, the more you’ll feel how the makers have chosen a wrong exit in order to take an easy way out.
The story was ready (adapted from Ondu Motteya Kathe) & the best they should’ve done it is to copy and paste the material. Cinema Lessons #101: If you’re remaking a film, tweak the story only if you think it will be better than the original. Even at 120 minutes, the length of the film is a big issue and that’s where it fails – to keep the audience intrigued. The most important angle of bald & fat-shaming is wasted and appears to be a dragged spoof.
Ujda Chaman Movie Review: Star Performance
Sunny Singh goes uni-dimensional for Ujda Chaman. Yes, it demanded a controlled performance but Sunny never gets up from his lazy character sketch. With a couple of similar expressions, he manages to occupy maximum screentime which gets frustrating by the end. Maanvi Gagroo is at her usual ‘good’ in the film. She’s a decent performer but needs a break to break the shackles she’s in.
Saurabh Shukla adds yet another ‘wasted cameo’ to his long filmography. Atul Kumar and Grusha Kapoor are good as Chaman’s mom and dad. The extremely beautiful Karishma Sharma does her part well. She shines in a ‘puppy face’ scene, deservingly so. Sharib Hashmi delivers an earnest performance. Aishwarya Sakhuja fits in perfectly for her role.
Ujda Chaman Movie Review: Direction, Music
Abhishek Pathak, the man who backed the Pyaar Ka Punchnama franchise, forays into direction with Ujda Chaman and it’s neat. If you skip the mess created by the story, Pathak takes the basic route of direction and does nothing fancy. He could well-lead a film with a good story but this wasn’t a good first ball for him.
Apart from Guru Randhawa’s Outfit (end-credits song) none of the three songs by Gourov-Roshin leave any impact on the story. All of them just extend the unbearable pace of the film.
Ujda Chaman Movie Review: The Last Word
All said and done, Ujda Chaman lacks what it takes to be an entertaining film. The humour falls flat, no strong supporting cast to keep you hooked, a story that can be done with in a single line – all of this is churned and processed for 120 minutes frustrating the life out of you.
Two Stars!
Ujda Chaman Trailer
Ujda Chaman releases on 1st November, 2019.