Business rating: 0.5 / 5 stars (Three stars)
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Star cast: Archana Joglekar, Chetan Pandit, Raghubir Yadav, Ashok Samarth, Akhilendra Mishra, Jackie Shroff, Shweta Tiwari.
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What’s Bad: The ordinary story; almost complete lack of entertainment value.
Verdict: Married 2 America is a below-average fare. Flop!
Loo break: Quite a few in the first half.
Watch or Not?: Watch it for the performances but be warned that the film, as a whole, does not have much to offer.
DNA Movies’ Married 2 America is about an NRI couple who get entangled in a web of corruption in India.
Ravi Malhotra (Chetan Pandit) and his wife, Anjali (Archana Joglekar), who stay in the US, have been married for five years. Ravi, an architect, is a workaholic and hardly gets time to take care of Anjali, who is dejected due to Ravi’s behaviour.
One day, Ravi calls Anjali and tells her that he needs to go to India urgently. Three months pass by and there is no word from Ravi. Anjali panics and goes to Patna in India to look for her missing husband. In Patna, she hires a taxi, driven by Raghu (Raghubir Yadav), to go to a minister in order to find out her husband’s whereabouts. When no help is forthcoming, she visits the public works department (PWD) office, where she learns that a dam in Darbhanga in Bihar, designed by Ravi, had collapsed a few months ago. The accident had destroyed many villages and claimed hundreds of innocent lives.
The chief engineer of PWD tells Anjali that the government of India was planning to sue Ravi. And they suspect that he may be absconding. Anjali decides to find out the truth about the matter and she travels to the dam with Raghu. She introduces herself as a tourist to a junior engineer at the dam. Afterwards, the junior engineer comes to know Anjali’s true identity and he tries to bury her alive. Raghu somehow manages to help her escape and they reach a police station to file a complaint. Anjali gets furious over the police inspector’s callous behaviour and this leads to an argument between them. Now, the police inspector locks them up. Raghu makes a phone call to a local don, Vishnu (Ashok Samarth), who secures their freedom from the police station and takes them home. Vishnu, who has lost his family in the floods, also comes to know that Anjali is Ravi’s wife and he then holds her captive, as he, too, blames Ravi for the floods.
What happens next? Where is Ravi? Is he responsible for the collapsing of the dam and the floods? Why did the junior engineer try to kill Anjali? Is Anjali able to find her husband?
Dilip Shankar’s story, about the widespread corruption in public life in India, is very ordinary. The drama is based in a small town of Bihar and will, thus, fail to connect with the urban audiences. The screenplay is engaging in parts only. The film looks like a docu-drama on corruption rather than an entertaining and engaging story. Also, the audience rarely, if ever, feels for the characters. The dialogues of the film, also penned by Dilip Shankar, are good but could have been more impactful.
The performances of the actors are very good. Archana Joglekar has played her role brilliantly and leaves an impact on the audience’s mind. Chetan Pandit is also very good and enacts his role with ease. Raghubir Yadav gets very limited scope as the taxi driver but acts fabulously. Ashok Samrath is good. Jackie Shroff as an ex-dacoit (Pratap Singh) fails to impress. Shweta Tiwari is convincing as Pratap Singh’s wife. Akhilendra Mishra is good as the chief minister. Others lend able support.
Dilip Shankar’s direction is okay. He extracts good performances from his cast and holds the script together. However, he is unable to gloss over the limitations of his script. Anwar Hussain’s music goes with the mood of the film. Lyrics, by Pt. Baijnath Gautam, Ibrahim Ashq, K.L. Pandey and Anshlal Pandre, are average. Ray Collins and R.M. Swamy’s cinematography passes muster. Editing, by Devendra Murdeshwar, is poor.
On the whole, Married 2 America is a below-average fare. It will fail to do anything at the box-office.
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