Aatli Baatmi Futlii – the secret is out. This Marathi film, directed by Vishal P Gandhi and Jinesh Ijardar and starring a bunch of seasoned actors, is hopelessly cartoonish.
Mohan Agashe and Rohini Hattangadi play an elderly couple in Mumbai. Bhaskar (Agashe) pays a gangster money to kill his wife Savita (Hattangadi). The day the murder is supposed to happen, the bank robber Sachin (Siddharth Jadhav) rushes into their house trying to escape the police hot on his heels. Sachin not only finds the couple there but also their neighbour Lalita (Pritam Kagne) trussed up like a prisoner.
What is happening here? It isn’t hard to guess – in fact, it is impossible not to. Several characters keep saying, “You dumb so-and-so.”
Similarly, the 114-minute movie, written by Ijardar, Gandhi, Jeevak Muntonde and Amman Advani, lacks the smartness needed to carry off what could have been an interesting comedy of errors. There isn’t enough comedy and far too many errors while following two intersecting plot strands: Sachin’s plight, and the couple’s situation.
Among the characters is Treesha Thosar as Sachin’s daughter Meenu, Vijay Nikam as Lalitha’s devotee Tiger and Bharat Ganeshpure as the spectacularly inefficient inspector Gore. Ananda Kerkar raises a few laughs as the partially paralysed Patil who cottons onto the truth before the others do, but is unable to communicate it to them. Before it gets all serious, Sachin is suitably befuddled at what Bhaskar and Savita are up to, and why.
Mohan Agashe, Rohini Hattangadi and Siddharth Jadhav are admirably professional in an amateurish film whose best twist comes right the end, a bit too late.
