Movie Review - Toilet: A Prem Katha by Suhel Johar

Toilet: A Prem Katha Is Like A Good Plot That Goes Haywire

 

After Jolly LLB 2 Akshay Kumar’s latest film Toilet: A Prem Katha is another social issue based film. Based on Narendra Modi’s Swachch Bharat Abhiyaan the film deals with the portentous problem of sanitation and open defecation in India. Despite 70 years of independence women in rural India have to go to the open fields for defecation. The men can sit somewhere in the open, but women have to wait for the dark of the evening to clean their bowels. The film tries to convey the message that women should respect themselves and express their objection to going out for defecation.

Toilet: A Prem Katha marks the return of editor turned director Shree Narayan Singh to film direction after a five year gap. His directorial debut was the forgettable Yeh Jo Mohabbat Hai (2012) which had launched Shakti Samanta’s grandson Aditya Samanta as a hero. But the film’s failure had forced Singh to go back to editing films. As an editor Singh has to his credit films like A Wednesday, Rustom, Baby, MS Dhoni: An Untold Story, Special 26, amongst others

Toilet: A Prem Katha begins when a ‘maanglik’ guy, Keshav (Akshay Kumar) is married to a buffalo to get his stars in the right position. A cycle store proprietor Keshav is a livewire who doesn’t shy of cracking jokes with rural connotations.  One day Keshav meets a college topper Jaya (Bhumi Pednekar) and falls for her. After successfully wooing her Keshav marries Jaya whose world turns upside down when she soon discovers that there is no toilet in Keshav’s house and women go to open fields to defecate. Jaya does not agree with that and leaves the house after threatening him that she won’t return until a toilet is built in the house. Keshav's biggest obstacle in fulfilling his wife’s request is his pundit father (Sudhir Pandey) who rules out building a toilet in the courtyard. With no toilet in sight Jaya consider taking a divorce. Since Keshav can’t even imagine a divorce from his wife he gears up to solve the problem without any further delay. Thus Keshav much against the will of his father and the villagers decides to build a toilet to save his marriage.

The biggest problem of this film is it’s duration of 2 hours and 35 minutes. Toilet: A Prem Katha drags at several places in both the halves. The first is all about fun and entertainment. Though we understand the context, the romance tends to overshadow the real issue. This does tend to bore the audience who are here to watch a strong social critique or perhaps even to enjoy some toilet humour but it is an indispensible part of the plot.

In the second half of the film the writers and the director lose the plot due to which inertia starts setting in and the film only gets stretched beyond control. There are so many places in the second half you wish that the film would there but the film just goes on and on.

There are some things that are very ridiculous in this film. In one scene in the film it is shown that files for the toilet scheme pass through many offices in which it takes a lot of time. So if you have to cut red tapism then you need to teach a lesson to the officers dealing with your files first. To achieve that goal all you need to do is to lock the toilet in government offices to build your toilets. The locked toilets will make the officers understand the seriousness of the problem and be forced to clear the relevant files. At several places the film seems like a docu feature or a government propaganda film.

There are too many unnecessary songs in the film and to make it worse for you the film has a very ordinary climax. You keep waiting for Keshav’s fight to turn into a deluge, for millions to join the struggle, for a mass resolution. Unfortunately, what starts out looking like a “one man sparks revolution” plot falls flat and ends with only his own personal success. This is a bit of a letdown given the hype and attention the film received prior to its release.  

Shree Narayan Singh as a director fails once again. His attempt to establish as well as resolve the conflict doesn’t come out convincing. Although a renowned name as a film editor Shree Narayan Singh’s editing is weak. Crisper editing might have had a better impact, Siddharth Singh and Garima Bahal, who have previously written Goliyon Ki Raasleela: Ram-Leela, as the writers of the film have done a half baked job. The repetition in the screenplay kills the novel story idea. Some of their quirky one liners make you laugh while a couple of monologues although fail to make the desired impact since they are oddly placed and don’t fit into the narrative. Anshuman Mahaley’s cinematography is decent. and the production design blends well with the subject. Music by Vickey Prasad, Manas-Shikhar and Sachet-Parampara is listless. Background score by Surender Sodhi is okay.

The film boasts of some good performances in the film. Akshay Kumar as Keshav is good. Bhumi Pednekar is brilliant. Divyendu Sharma is a scene stealer. Sudhir Pandey makes his presence felt while Anupam Kher is irritating. Shubha Khote, Rajesh Sharma and Sana Khan lend adequate support.

On the whole, Toilet: A Prem Katha is a confused film which is not sure whether to preach or entertain.