Customer Reviews

Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008)(DvD/Hindi Film/Bollywood/Indian Cinema/Comedy/Shreyas Thalpade)1

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the tiny, mostly uneducated population of the Sajjanpur village, Mahadev (Shreyas Talpade) stands out as one of the few who's had formal schooling. Thus, he spends much of his time composing letters for the town illiterates and for those lacking that knack for communicating in prose. So Madahev's cleverly written words impact many lives, his pen particularly determining the fates of a compounder (re: doctor/pharmacist) besotted with a young widow, a frazzled matronly woman who wants to marry off her spinster daughter literally to a dog, a drag queen wanting to run for mayor, and, most especially, the beautiful Kamla the potter (Amrita Rao), an old classmate with whom Mahadev falls madly in love. So it's not cool that Kamla is already married.

After Shreyas Talpade's stellar performance in Iqbal, I was anticipating a bounty of goodness in this movie. But a couple of things factor into making WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR a lethargic viewing experience. Most notably, the pace drags for much of the film. It may have been a mistake to allot so much screen time to Talpade's supporting cast, given that their ancillary slice-of-life stories aren't so absorbing. I nodded off several times during the watching of this, and had to rewatch it the day after just to see if it was that bad and that slow (and it was). The songs are unspectacular and the humor is coarse and fraught with uber cheese, which is routine for the common denominator Bollywood flick. It's too talky, with much of the dialogue falling flat (that is, if the sub-titles hold true to the actual dialogue). Amrita Rao, terrific in Vivah and Main Hoon Na, here gets handed a one-note role. Shreyas Talpade, so memorable as the deaf and dumb Iqbal, keeps things afloat, but is disserviced by a plodding story.

Probably one of the things I disliked most about the film is that it introduces an unsavory element into Mahadev's personality. So the village scribe falls in love with the forlorn village belle Kamla, whose husband for four years now has been away toiling in the big city. I cringed in those scenes in which Mahadev sabotages Kamla's letters to her husband and then purposely misreads her husband's written responses. How could this possibly end in a happy way?

Expect a twisting near the film's end, resulting in a reversal of several fortunes (one of which was fairly horrific) and a convenient resolution to the spinster's wedding to a dog. The twist is interesting, one I didn't see coming. But it's not enough to stem this film's tidal wave of ennui.

This movie is quiet good , songs are really nice unexpectedly.
I started seeing this movie without knowing the fact it was Benegal's movie . Most of the time
I fast forward most Bollywood movies to if there is something interesting or may be funny.
But this movie was not out and out comedy but very interesting , I was curious to see if the director can continue
the good stuff till the end. Dialogues are simple ,at times satirical and ofcourse witty.
In between I heard couple of nice songs combined with very good playback music .
Very nice love story. At the end of the movie I was curious to find out more details about the movie and I found it was Benegals movie. The reason I missed it was I have skipped first 2-3 minutes and treated it like other hindi movies.
I was so impressed by the movie watched it again.
This is how a movie should be made , it sends right message and very powerful one.

There is never a dull moment in this movie, which is a story told through the eyes of a town letter -writer who sits bang outside the post office and services the population (mainly uneducated females) which cannot or does not write its own letters.

This `writer' is a bachelor and the story demonstrates the power of his pen.

There is an election campaign where a goodhearted transvestite is pitted against the local bigwig. There are spinsters, widows, paramedics, women whose husbands work in the city and a proud, retired army man. There are no gruesome baddies in this movie, which is a well directed mainstream Hindi movie.

The bachelor angles for the wife- with- husband- away- in- the- city, but ends up being a Good Samaritan to the couple. And, there are the snake charmer father and son, seller of esoteric oils with magical powers. The acerbic spinster runs away from her symbolic `astrological marriage' and the bachelor is smitten.

The Director is famous for his movies, and this one too does not disappoint. Shreyas Talpade, as the writer, has delivered a stellar performance.

Good prevails over evil in this movie at every turn but the story does not leave the realm of realism. It's a charged, hilarious and racy narration of the extraordinary events of a sleepy little town!

This movie is a great family entertainer, a `must see', and I have not come across anyone yet, who didn't like the movie!

Absolutely brilliant....has you in splits all the way from the first scene to the last. Heartwarming!