Toh Baat Pakki!

Loo Break: A couple of songs… because of their poor picturisation.

Tips Films’ Toh Baat Pakki! is about a middle-class lady, Rajeshwari (Tabu), who lives with her husband, Surinder (Ayub Khan), and two little kids in a small town. Her younger sister, Nisha (Yuvika Chaudhary), stays with her mother (Suha- sini Mulay) in another town. Rajeshwari is on the lookout for a suitable boy to get her sister married. According to her, that boy is the most suitable who is rich. And so, the well-meaning Rajeshwari discards the first boy, Rahul (Sharman Joshi), she has set her eyes on, as soon as she meets another better-placed boy, Yuvraj (Vatsal Seth), because while the former is yet studying engineering, the latter has a comfortable managerial job and a car and would soon be provided a bungalow by the company he works for.

However, the problem is that in trying to ‘fix’ Nisha with Rahul, Rajeshwari had led them to fall in love with one another. And so, while Nisha yearns for her beloved but finally agrees to go by her elder sister’s wishes, Rahul hatches a plot to ensure that Nisha and Yuvraj’s marriage is stalled and that he gets Nisha’s hand. Does he succeed?

The story, written by Pramod Sharma, is fair but the problems are in Vibha Singh’s screenplay which is written in a way that would’ve been more suitable for a television serial. There are some funny scenes but the humour is not consistently good enough. Probably, even more irritating is the inherently slow tempo of the drama. The characters seem to move at a snail’s pace, much like the car belonging to Surinder and Rajeshwari. Also, just moving from one eligible bachelor to a second one doesn’t create the desired humour. What was needed was for Rajeshwari to keep moving from one to a second one, then to a third one and, perhaps, a fourth one. It is only then that her fickle-mindedness and her fascination for a rich boy would’ve been appropriately established to evoke laughter.

The second half appears too stretched and, at times, forced too. Rahul trying to scare Yuvraj and his mother (Himani Shivpuri) doesn’t evoke much laughter. Nor does the Kidnapping drama of the climax because although it is supposed to look real, it actually looks stage-managed right from the word ‘go’. In fact, the humour in the post-interval portion doesn’t gladden the heart. Even the track of Rahul’s maternal uncle (Sharat Saxena) fails to work. It is because of the aforementioned reasons that even some witty dialogues have less than the desired impact.

Another major drawback of the film is that it talks about very small and trivial things. For instance, when Rajeshwari compares the rates of the caterer, music band etc. which she has managed to get for her sister’s wedding with those Rahul has managed, she speaks in terms of saving a few thousand rupees only! This suddenly makes the audience realise that the characters are too petty-minded. No doubt they are simpletons living in a small town, but the audience today is used to hearing dialogues about crores of rupees, not thousands!

Tabu is cute and her performance is refreshing. Sharman Joshi is endearing. Vatsal Seth does quite well. Yuvika Chaudhary is no heroine material. Her acting is average. Because she lacks the oomph and is also not a striking beauty, it looks funny that two guys should be dying to get married to her. Ayub Khan is suitably restrained. Himani Shivpuri does justice to her role. Sharat Saxena is alright. Suhasini Mulay and Upasna Singh lend the required support.

Director Kedar Shinde’s narrative style is too laidback. There seems to be no fire in the characters. While a few of the comic scenes have been handled ably by Shinde, the other scenes are quite flat. Pritam’s music is good but there is not a single memorable song. What’s more, even the well-tuned songs have not become very popular. ‘Jis din mera biyah hovega’ is the best number, followed by ‘Dil le jaa’. Song picturisations (by Ahmed Khan) are too ordinary and even the locations they have been picturised on are hardly eye-catching. Camerawork (Rahul Jadhav and Raja Satankar) is dull, to say the least. Editing (N.V. Mayekar) is not sharp enough.

On the whole, Toh Baat Pakki! is too mediocre to make any mark at the box-office. A dull fare which has opened to poor houses, it can’t hope for a miracle to happen.