REVIEW: Welcome To Sajjanpur

Welcome to Sajjanpur – a small village in Northern India where letters are still the only mode of communication, power cuts are a part of daily life and riding a two-wheeler is like a distant dream.

An aspiring novelist Mahadev (Shreyas Talpade), earns his living by reading and writing letters for the illiterate villagers. Through these letters one gets to know the life stories of the film's dozen odd characters.

And in these often-satirical stories, director Shyam Benegal chooses to touch upon rural India's topical issues such as widow remarriage, caste politics and superstition. But after a point he establishes just too many sub-plots in a case of biting off more than he can chew. So while you have the protagonist's love story developing in one scene the next one shows him caught between two rival politicians. This goes on right till the end where a good ten minutes are utilised to explain what happened to the various characters who were forgotten in the course of the film.

What rocked

What remains with you through and after this movie is its authentic rural setting. After a long time we have had a film set completely in the Hindi heartland (the only other recent examples being Maalamal Weekly and Omkara). In fact the dialogue is so deep rooted in the local dialect, it might require more than decent knowledge of Hindi to really enjoy the film's humour.

Welcome to Sajjanpur totally rests upon Shreyas Talpade's shoulders. The actor's comic timing is getting better with each film and it's his performance that makes up for the film's many flaws. Seen in almost every frame of the film Shreyas is the hero of the enterprise in every sense of the word. The 'stand out' Shreyas moment would be his spoof on SRK's Kuch Kuch Hota Hai 'Maa' speech. Talpade is here to stay and is far more watchable than many other overrated so called serious actors.

Amrita Rao doesn't have much of a role but continues her coy Vivah act. And is actually very likeable. The rest of the supporting cast stay true to their characters with each actor delivering spirited performances. Kunal Kapoor seems to have become a guest appearance specialist in a cameo similar to his Bachna Ae Haseeno act as the good-natured husband.

But as they say too much of a good is bad – That's exactly the problem with this film. Without much of a plot this character driven film clearly overstays its welcome. Why did an experienced filmmaker like Benegal fall prey to the trend of dream songs? Not only is the song placement flawed the soundtrack is a big bore as well. What could have been a simple, short story is unnecessarily stretched to almost three hours. So even though it is far superior to most films you see week after week once the end credits roll you are kind of thankful it all got over.

Verdict: Shreyas Talpade is the life of Welcome To Sajjanpur. The rest of is like a DD TV serial that doesn't know when to end.

Rating: 2.5/5