Film Review - Calendar Girls

In Their Skin

 

Film: Calendar Girls

Cast: Ruhi Singh, Avani Modi, Akansha Puri, Kyra Dutt, Satarupa Pyne
Directedby : Madhur Bhandarkar
Duration: 2 hrs 17 mins
Rating:  * * 

There is no denying that Madhur Bhandarkar has created a niche for himself as a director – over the years, he has picked up subjects and while some of them have hit the nail on the head (Chandani Bar, Page 3) some others have ended up as also-rans.

He has a fascination for the world of glamour – Heroine and Fashion dealt with those issues while the rest also had a dose of it.  Calendar Girls is a modest attempt more on the lines of Fashion.

Madhur Bhandarkar’s films follow a certain template when it comes to the characters and story-telling and this one is no different (mercifully we are spared of the gay jokes).  So a bunch of girls from different parts of India and one from Pakistan are selected as calendar girls which is run by a business baron (Suhel Seth doing a Mallya).  After donning bikinis and various skimpy outfits, post the launch of the calendar, their real life begins. 

Nazneen (Avani Modi) is becomes an escort pleasing the rich and the famous, Mayuri (Ruhi Singh) becomes an actress who wants to make it big and has her own shrewd ways of doing that, Goan lass Sharon (Kyra Dutt) ends up doing television, Nandita (Akanksha Puri) become a trophy wife of a young and rich industrialist while the Bong girl Paroma (Satarupa Pyne) gets involved in the match fixing scandal.

The film ends up becoming mash up of previous Bhandarkar films. If the idea is to follow the same style of story-telling then there still has to be enough novelty to keep the audience engaged. It touches upon subjects like the IPL betting (no so new anymore) and various other real life people and incidents but the formula is all too familiar.

Given the nature of the subject, there is a fair amount of cleavage and skin on display, not all of it was mandatory though -a bit of subtlety could have taken care of that and in a more effective manner, but then again subtlety is not what sells at the box office.  

Published in The Navhind Times on 27th Sept. 2015
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