Ludo Hindi Movie Review: Anthology that revolves around love and money !!!
Ludo is a new multi starer dark comedy Hindi movie released on 12th November 2020 on Netflix. For those who do not know what dark comedy is, it’s a humorous way of looking at the gloomy or the serious side of life. It’s an anthology of four stories that mainly revolves around love and money. Movie stars Abhishek Bachchan, Aditya Roy Kapur, Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Sanya Malhotra, et al. Movie is directed by Anurag Basu who is known for directing Murder, Gangster, and Barfi in the past.
Ludo Hindi Movie Plot
Ludo is an anthology of four stories
Story of Bittu (played by Abhishek Bachan)
Bittu is a goon who works for Sattu Bhaiya. Bittu is married and has kids. Bittu gets imprisoned after a rift between him and Sattu Bhaiya. Disheartened by Bittu’s lifestyle, his wife divorces him and marries Bhanu. Sattu Bhaiya continues to pester Bittu’s wife and her new husband for the old loan that is taken by Bittu. Once Bittu is out of jail, he gets to know that his wife is married to Bhanu and his kids don’t even recognize him. Even after taking the extreme step of divorcing Bittu, his wife is not able to lead a peaceful life because of Sattu Bhaiya. Both Bittu and Bhanu approaches Bittu and requests him to repay the loan. Bittu agrees to help them by hatching a kidnapping plan with the help of another kid Mini who is seeking her rich parent’s attention.
Story of Akash Chauhan and Shruti Choksi (played by Aditya Roy Kapur and Sanya Malhotra).
Shruti Choksi is about to get married in a few days and her estranged boyfriend Akash Chauhan gets to know that one of their intimate videos is uploaded on the internet and it’s getting viral. Akash approaches Shruti and explains the situation. Shruti agrees to work with Akash and get the video deleted from the internet. They travel and stay together for their mission of getting the video deleted from the internet. During their mission, they cherish their old memories and develop attachment towards each other once again.
Story of Alok Kumar Gupta and Pinky (played by Rajkummar Rao and Fatima Sana Shaikh)
Alok, a fan of Mithun Chakraborty is in love with Pinky. But Pinky is married to someone else and she has a baby. Pinky’s husband gets arrested for the murder that is committed by Sattu Bhaiya and Pinky needs someone’s help to get her husband out of the prison. The only person who is willing to help her is Alok. Though Alok is not going to get anything in return for the favor that he is going offer to Pinky, still he decides to help her out of love. Both Alok and Pinky gets into lots of tussles as they try to get Pinky’s husband out of prison.
Story of Shreeja Thomas and Rahul Awasthi (played by Pearle Maaney and Rohit Saraf)
Rahul gets to meet Shreeja during a fire accident at Sattu Bhaiya’s office. During the mishap, both get their hands on Sattu Bhaiya’s money. Rahul works at an electronic shop and Shreeja works as a nurse. Both unhappy with their job decides to lead a better life with the help of the money that has luckily fallen into their hands. However, they get chased continuously by Sattu Bhaiya’s gang. During their run, they develop attachment towards each other.
Rahul Satyendra ‘Sattu Bhaiya’ Tripathi — a don, played by Pankaj Tripathi is a common character in all the four stories who acts as a bridge between them.
Ludo Hindi Movie Review
Very rarely we get to see such dark comedy movies in Bollywood. Anurag Basu has taken the initiative and hopefully, we will get to see more such movies based on dark comedy in Bollywood. Ludo is a fun movie to watch, packed with multiple actors and stories it ensures a good amount of entertainment. Everyone has done their part to entertain the audience, my favorite being Inayat Verma who played the role of Mini. Inayat Verma impresses the audience with her innocence and performance. I also liked the non-linear screenplay at the beginning of the movie which we have all seen in a good old classic Pulp Fiction. Pankaj Tripathi has done justice to the character but it isn’t as impressive as his performance in Mirzapur. I should also call out Rajkummar Rao’s dance moves inspired by Mithun Chakraborty, which is good and also funny.
It isn’t easy to come up with a meaningful anthology involving so many characters which intersect once in a while and converges at the end.
Fours Stories of this Anthology has been compared with four colors of the Ludo game. Basically, it’s a comparison between the uncertainties that we come across in game and life. The movie takes at least an hour to introduce all the characters and stories to us. The first half is certainly entertaining and engaging but it gets a little boring in the second half. There are few back-to-back songs that sound similar and we won’t even know if it’s the same song or a different one, and that’s when the movie gets boring.
Apart from Bittu’s story, all other stories seem to be new. Bittu’s story is something that we would have seen in many other old movies. Every 2–3 minutes story keeps switching between each other and it becomes a little difficult to focus on a single story, along with that it gets a little confusing as well. At one point in time, I felt it’s too much of a story for one single movie. Probably multiple movies could have been shot with the amount of story that Anurag Basu had, but then it wouldn’t have been an anthology and it wouldn’t have been a fun movie like this one.
I am not sure if it’s a guideline from Netflix to have nude scenes for releasing a movie on their platform. The nude scene at the beginning of the movie wasn’t needed at all. Seemed like it was added just to bring in some adult stuff into the movie. Moreover, it isn’t a pleasant nude scene and it tends to bring out the disgusting look on our faces.
The most boring part of the movie is the discussion between Yamraj and Chitragupta who narrates the story while playing Ludo. Though they talk about the important aspects of life and death, it could have been avoided for good. In my opinion, skipping this narration part wouldn’t have made any difference to the movie.
Ludo movie delivers a powerful message that humans will go to any extent to get their money and love back, and the definition of right/wrong and good/bad does not hold good when it comes to money and love.
Laxmii and Ludo released almost at the same time. Many of them liked Ludo and many liked Laxmii. Personally, I liked Laxmii more than Ludo.
Originally published at http://www.acharyareviews.in.
Read more review at http://www.acharyareviews.in/