Thedudeabides_thelaw

The joy of discovering an unknown but well made film that's what I got when I watched this film which I discovered by accident and instinctively decided to watch. It has some very good performances - some of the best performances you would see. Shewta Basu Prasad is the best of the lot. She has a physical deformity(squint) to carry for this role and yet had to emote without ever going over the top. I haven't seen much of her work other than as child actress in Iqbal and Makdee and the brief role in Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota but going by all that I have seen I can say that she has a great future ahead. She is simply awesome. This also has Sunny Hinduja of the Family Man but his role isn't very important here though it has its own arc and he is very apt. Raghuveer Yadav is always a delight to watch. The story is good and very real. There are no frills and it touches you but just falls short of being excellent. It's simplicity is it's high point but that may have also been the reason for it being overlooked.

I had read about it long back when it released and finally I watched it. It has three stories and the common theme is discontentment and isolation. The title itself represents the theme, "locked in" being it and of course the title alludes to Mumbai. All the stories are essentially fable like and bring out satirical humor or give us food for thought. It's a darkly comic drama film. So there is a corporate employee who has to have 'fun' because that's the mandate. Then a story of a television set and how the family gets hooked to watching a parallel world which counter questions their real life existence. Then the third story about an unattractive woman who receives a letter from a stranger admirer and learns to smile and express herself but is that it or there is more to those letters? You won't get happy ending in these stories. I liked all the three stories but not all of them are fleshed out as consistently as they could have. The second story which seemed least impressive on story level in fact is the best fleshed out one. But overall it's a very good watch and a fine little gem in Hindi cinema that has been overlooked.

I thought the trailer was decent and Abhishek Bachan as chaudhary seemed quiet interesting to watch but the film turned out to be extremely boring. It was disjointed incoherent and for lack of a better word weird. Even scenes or dialogues which I guess were intentioned to be funny failed to even make me smile. It talks about how education can make you a better person ( ?). But even that simple message however untrue it sound doesn't land the way it should have. There seem to be a few real life references - from Lalu Prasad and Rabri devi to Chautalas from Haryana which has been named as Harit Pradesh here which by the way if you google is not entirely a fictional name. The story is definitely inspired from the ex chief minister of Haryana whose name I had read last year of having taken tenth class exam while he was in jail for ironically a teacher recruitment scam. The story had potential but has been totally wasted because of sloppy writing and direction.