Ekkees Toppon Ki Salaami Movie Review: A Good Dramedy

There have been films in the past that have claimed to be good dramadies (drama plus comedy) in the offering. However, hardly a film or two has succeeded in that. Ekkees Toppon Ki Salaami manages to hold your attention though. Yes, it does have a shaky first 30-40 minutes while the ending doesn't quite give you the kind of emotional upheaval after the stage was set well. Still, as a film which indeed has a truly different storyline, you feel adequately engaged with what the film has to offer with good entertainment quotient added too.

Debutant director Ravindra Gautam (who has worked extensively with Ekta Kapoor on daily soaps) gets his fundas right when it comes to making his first feature film. He keeps things simple and while the disclaimer is right there at the film's beginning that this is a political satire, one can pretty much sense why some of the scenes are over exaggerated.

So when a Chief Minister (Rajesh Sharma) pleads before a television hotshot (Aasif Sheikh) to make news out of a bigger scam than some random 'love, sex aur dhokha', it paints the picture on both sides around the state of affairs in the country. Or when an actress-turned-mistress-turned-wife (Neha Dhupia) gets into a melodramatic mode every now and then, you know that all of this is just for effect to drive home the point. Or when Divyendu Sharma and Manu Rishi Chadha, two nalaayak bete of an honest aam aadmi (Anupam Kher) eventually decide to fulfill his dying wish, you do root for them.

Ok, so the dying wish isn't anything simple. Since the old man wanted sammaan at least after his death, if not during his lifetime, the two sons have a task in hand to ensure 'ekkees toppon ki salaami'!

The stage is set right at the beginning though when the two sons take a train journey. After that the film does dip a little for around 30 odd minutes when the scenes work only sporadically. This includes the sequences where Neha Dhupia comes on frame and there is some good entertainment quotient that sets in. With such a convincing act all over again, one wonders why we don't see her much more frequently. Also, the scene where Rajesh Sharma goes on a cursing spree and his speech writer (Aditi Sharma) makes it all polished and 'public friendly' is true well pitched.

It is just that one would have wanted more of that to begin with but what one gets to witness is a sob-drama once where Anupam Kher gets into, well, Anupam Kher mode, an art that he has mastered for decades now. He is just the kind of lower middle class janitor that fitted into the scheme of affairs for the film. However, it isn't fairly established that why Manu Rishi and Divyendu Sharma behave like Sujit Kumar and Raj Kiran from the 70s and the 80s.

Thankfully, the film doesn't deviate much and as it comes to the middle point, the story telling shifts to being largely comical. It is a story of a few hours in a day for all involved which means two corpses need to be inter-changed, one man has to act like a corpse, the writer girl has to keep herself in close contact with the politician's mother (Uttara Baokar), a senior official from the Municipality goes through a change of heart and a couple of Swiss bankers aren't even suspected to remerge on the scene after being knocked down by the two brothers.

All such tangents are well taken of, courtesy the film's solid storyline which is indeed original. Director Ravindra Gautam does well in not making any tall claims around the film being in the Rajkumar Hirani mode, even though the fact remains that there are places where one can see his golden touch.

Nonetheless, what truly works right through the film's running length is every actor's performance. Be it Anupam Kher (who gets yet another meaty part - and does complete justice to it), Divyendu Sharma (Pyaar Ka Punchnama, Chashme Baddoor) who shows that he can go much beyond comedy, Aditi Sharma (who is the film's heroine but fortunately stays miles away from being a quintessential leading lady), Manu Rishi (who scores again, despite patchy characterization, motive and intentions), Neha Dupia (who is fantastic) to Uttara Baokar (who is just terrific as Rajesh's opportunist mother) - they all contribute.

Now if only the film would have been crisper with a better start, better detailing out of the characters and more reasoning/logic established, Ekkees Toppon Ki Salaami could well have been a must watch.