Toilet : Ek Prem Katha Review&BO (Reviews Page 1) - Page 11

#ToiletEkPremKatha integrates a strong social message with entertainment wonderfully... Powerful performances by Akshay, Bhumi, Divyendu...

Star Cast: Akshay Kumar, Bhumi Pednekar, Divyendu Sharma, Anupam Kher, Rakesh Sharma, Sudhir Pandey

Director: Shree Narayan Singh

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha Review

What's Good: Performances, honest attempt at tackling a social issue, funny moments in the first half & few dramatic moments in the second half.

What's Bad: Slow pace, goes haywire in the second half, steps over the line to be preachy, too many unnecessary songs.

Loo Break: In many songs!

Watch or Not?: Yes! Because despite of flaws the issue raised in the film is something everyone should be aware of.

User Rating:

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, the name of the film says it all. It's a love story binded with a subject of tackling defecation in open. It's an intriguing subject and can be explored in many ways. This is a story about Keshav (Akshay Kumar), a 12th fail 36-year-old bachelor who's forcefully trapped with the traditional rituals applied by his father. His father, Pandit Ji (Sudhir Pandey) is someone who'll u-turn his bike rather than going through the road crossed by a cat. On the other hand, there's quirky, full of life, carrying I-don't-give-a-shit about world attitude Jaya (Bhumi Pednekar). Science has already proven, opposite attracts and these two poles-apart personalities get one.

The main issue stats when they get married. Jaya's outburst when she gets to know there's no sanitization facility at Keshavs house, Keshav's attempts to challenge the years-old tradition and Pandit Ji's baseless persistence of disallowing of toilet facility at his home is what the plot revolves around. There's much more to the story than this and those moments make the film watchable.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha Review: Script Analysis

The movie is full of happy-realisation moments and dialogues like "Zyada pada likhai fail kar deti hai. When you decide to display an issue which many are unaware about you need something to attract them, a love story in the film is one of those reasons. The first half of the film is full of some hilarious moments and second half depends majorly on drama. One issue I had with the script is it takes a lot of time to build and when it's finally at the peak, things get done very quickly.

Director has made sure to infuse some fun moments in between to not stare the attention away from the audience. The second half is full of high emotional drama moments which tend to slow down the pace at places. A good movie should have a good intermission point and this has a very good one. Songs in the film seem to be forcefully injected in the screenplay. If the songs would've been good this wouldn't have been much of a problem, but they are pretty average.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha Review: Star Performance

Akshay Kumar as Keshav is as honest as one can get. He has lived the role and is a perfect choice to send out this message. He makes you laugh, leaves your eyes moist and even provokes the emotions in you with his super-energetic opposition. His accent for a man living in Uttar Pradesh is perfect.

Bhumi Pednekar is the biggest revelation of the film. She as Jaya is the face of every girl who has ever faced this issue. She just makes you fall for her charm. It's hard to master a de-glam role and she has nailed it. Her dialogue delivery, expressions are at the top of the game.

Divyendu Sharma is a surprise package of the film. His chemistry with Akshay Kumar is the base of fun in the film. Anupam Kher makes his presence felt as Bhumi Pednekar's grandfather who loves to watch Sunny Leone's movies. Sudhir Pandey as Akshay Kumar's father will annoy you and that's where he scores well.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha Review: Direction, Music

Direction by Shree Narayan Singh is not lofty but is just about good. It could've been done better. Screenplay looks very repetitive, thanks to some good moments which hide this flaw. Editing of the film too is not at par and it easily could've been a few minutes shorter. Some scenes just don't make sense and do nothing but drag the plot.

The movie follows the path of multiple composers and this is where it fails. Music by Vickey Prasad, Manas-Shikhar and Sachet-Parampara is the weakest link of the film. Background score by Surender Sodhi is good at times but meh at others.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha Review: The Last Word

This is an honest attempt to tackle something that exists but not many are aware of it. This film will make you laugh, feel and most importantly think. Watch this for Akshay Kumar and Bhumi Pednekar's true-to-the-soul performances.

Three stars!

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha Movie Review - Akshay Kumar's film is inspired by a true story, but little that it offers by way of insight rings true. Some of the dialogues are cringe-worthy, the drama gratingly shrill and the solutions utterly facile

Rating: 2 Stars (Out Of 5)

When what should at best have been a ten-minute public service film bloats into a two-and-a-half-hour, patience-testing, yawn-inducing Bollywood puff-job for a government scheme, it is bound to stink to high heaven. Toilet: Ek Prem Katha does. Editor-director Shree Narayan Singh presents a corny, cringe-worthy mix of entertainment and edification in the service of the much tom-tommed Swachh Bharat campaign. In the end, it is no more than a filmed pamphlet - patchy, pulpy, preachy and painfully protracted.

The partisanship on show here is unprecedented for a Mumbai mainstream flick. When it refers to a big toilet scam, it points out that all of it happened four years ago. It also slips in a laudatory reference to demonetisation too and completely exposes its hand. It is one thing for a political dispensation to equate the Prime Minister's optics-heavy swachhata abhiyan with Mahatma Gandhi's untouchabilty-negating, status quo-defying cleanliness experiments, quite another for a Bollywood film to follow suit. It only dilutes the integrity of an undeniably relevant message.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha - Akshay Kumar in a film's still (Courtesy: TEPKTheFilm)

The film's flimsy approach and flaccid structure do not help matters one bit. By the time it lumbers its way to an entirely predictable and unconvincing climax, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha is crying out to be flushed down the very drain it has popped up from. There is very little genuine cinema here. It's all overly melodramatic propaganda of the kind that is better left to the sarkari outreach machinery.

The performances are earnest, if not extraordinary, with Akshay Kumar, trying hard to look 36, leading the way. Bhumi Pednekar, in her second outing after 2015's sleeper hit Dum Laga Ke Haisha, fleshes out a refreshingly relatable college topper who becomes the principal catalyst for a mini-revolution in an immutable village.

Not that the urgency of the theme can be downplayed. After all, more than half the people who defecate in the open reside in this country. But surely there are ways more subtle and less fawning of getting that obvious point across. That's way beyond this film's ken.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha is about a man compelled by his bride to think of building a pucca latrine in the village. In his conservative neck of the woods, he must move heaven and earth to achieve his goal. The film follows him as he negotiates a series of obstacles, most of them stemming from the obscurantist ways of the village.


The film is inspired by a true story, but little that it offers by way of insight rings true. Some of the dialogues are cringe-worthy, the drama gratingly shrill and the solutions utterly facile.

The intent of Toilet: Ek Prem Katha may be commendable. The execution is hugely hamfisted. When a Bollywood filmmaker assumes the role of a cheerleader for a government campaign on whose efficacy the jury is still out, you know you've been had.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha is as avoidable as what it rightly rails against - open defecation.

Interval. OUTSTANDING till now! Hats off to @akshaykumar for attempting what no star of his stature would even think of. #ToiletEkPremKatha