Sonali Cable

Cast: Rhea Chakraborty, Ali Fazal, Anupam Kher, Swanand Kirkire, Raghav Juyal, Smita Jaykar

Writer/Director: Charu Dutt Acharya

Producer/s: Rohan Sippy, Ramesh Sippy, Roopa De Choudhury

Plot: Sonali Cable is a ‘David versus Goliath’ story, in the thick of the cable internet turf war in Mumbai.  An ordinary girl puts her love, life and survival at stake, when she and her ragtag team come in the way of the expansion plans of India’s largest corporation.

Rating: 1/5 Stars (One star)

Star Cast: Rhea Chakraborty, Ali Fazal, Anupam Kher, Swanand Kirkire, Raghav Juyal, Smita Jaykar

Director: Charu Dutt Acharya

What’s Good: Nearly nothing.

What’s Bad: The screenplay, the script, the direction and mostly the editing.

Loo break: Loo is the best idea to survive such films.

Watch or Not?: Sonali Cable is one of those films that will infuriate you with its dragging plotline. When you are on the brink of boredom’s last limit, it will push you down to convey that the film can go worse. Now, that I have made it clear that I have hated the film, let me answer why. The film is a convoluted mess that bites into more than it can chew. Ticking off romance, political saga, corporate monopoly to melodrama, the film makes a glorious hotch potch out of it all. Sonali Cable is a classic example of a good concept butchered and despite earnest actors like Ali and Rhea trying to make it all seem believable to you, the film is pretty much an unwatchable tirade you shouldn’t even consider watching.

User Rating: 

Sonali (Rhea) owns a local cable center along with a local MLA, who has partnered with her to win hearts as well as votes. She and her bunch of boys are internet experts, fixing 404 and 586 errors in no time. She enjoys good customer base until attacked by Shining’s Corporation’s offer to shut down their internet service, a company looking to monopolize its hold over the broadband sector.

Sonali is ferocious and wouldn’t give in and with support and love of her childhood sweetheart Raghu (Ali Fazal), she takes on the big corporation single handedly and brings them down with courage. Sonali Cable celebrates the power of underdog.

Sonali Cable Review: Script Analysis

Let me begin by saying Sonali Cable isn’t a very diluted concept in Bollywood. The take might be partly novel, but when you have made a film that bad, it is hard to look at the brighter side of things. A small cable center supported by a local MLA, faces massive trouble when a big Corporate company decides on acquiring the small cable centers providing broadband services and replace it with their brand Shining. They want to conquer to the whole market, from soap to oil to water to cable. Their aim is to create the most unique consumer-company. Strategically placed in the middle of all this is the basic drama of the film. In plain terms, it is a confused drama that doesn’t achieve anything in its climax either. The climax is simply a crash course on how to get an elephant do disco.

The film never attempts to raise the bar for itself, be it in its love story that requires the needed chemistry or in rest of things it is attempting to say. It ends up being sucked in further and further into the mess it draws for itself. Most characters in the film fail to get fleshed out enough and even Sonali herself who leads the mandate cannot convince the audience of her pain, angst, love, passion or energy.

Ali Fazal, who was a surprise package in Bobby Jasoos and whose love story with Vidya Balan in the film was a palpable one, that stayed absolutely wasted in this film. It is a wasted plot that tries too much and eventually achieves nothing of it. But a contrived climax and the predictable storyline makes the film a hard to bear bore tale, which by interval has you guffawing at its sheer stupidity and by end pushes you into snoreland.

Sonali Cable Review: Star Performances

I did not quite like Rhea Chakraborty’s work in the film. But I can safely say atleast she was earnest in the film. The lady has visibly worked on her lingo and twang in the film. Though clearly not authentic, her effort for the role of Sonali showed.

Ali Fazal is not even close to what he is capable of. The actor has good potential and this film fails to unleash it. The chemistry with Rhea is also not sizzling as one would expect. In a particular make-out scene between the two, the required zing was starkly missing.

Raghu Juyal, who plays Sada in the movie is rather better than the leads. In his little stint, the actor does a good job enough to be remembered despite the movie being nothing short of a dud.

Smita Jaykar overplays her role of a ruthless MLA. Lacking in subtlety and the desired political viciousness, she almost sleepwalked through her role and managed to be passable because of her experience.