Tumhari Sulu - BO Collections & Movie Reviews-DTNpg9

• Critic's Review

Bollywood needs an actress like Vidya Balan. While actresses prefer to stay away from silver screen after marriage, Vidya Balan has been doggedly trying to sustain in an industry where fifty-plus heroes want to romance two-decade younger heroines. It also helps that she is a natural performer, but box office success has been eluding her for some time now. Her earlier movie in 2017, Begum Jaan, was a massive disappointment. Will Tumhari Sulu bring her back to the top of the rat race? Well, we don't know about that yet, but read our review ahead to find out if the movie is worth your time.

The plot

Sulochana aka Sulu (Vidya Balan) is a housewife with a happy family consisting of a loving husband Ashok (Manav Kaul) and their 11-year old son. Though their family life is content, Sulu wants to do more that will make her compete with her two bossy banker sisters. When she wins a contest for a radio station and goes there to collect her prize, she sees an opportunity to become an RJ and decides to try her luck. The boss there (Neha Dhupia) sees a spark in her, or rather in her voice and offers her the job to host a late night chat show. Her show becomes very popular among the depraved men in the city and she becomes a star in her office. But back home, the situation changes drastically when the initially supportive husband becomes insecure about his wife's success and the fact that she talks seductively to random strangers.

Will Sulu manage to balance both her lives successfully or will she end up ruining her domestic life? You will have to watch the movie to find out.

The good

Tumhari Sulu has a theme that every middle-class family can relate to. Bollywood has evolved a lot in showing its female leads from being just an arm-candy to the hero to being a career-oriented woman with their own identity. But we have often forgotten that many ladies among us are housewives, who either are happily settled in domestic bliss, or yearn to do more with their lives. Tumhari Sulu is dedicated to those belonging to the latter category, and that's something which will make the movie endearing to the family audience.

It also helps that Tumhari Sulu has a lot of charming moments that will either make you smile or make you feel for the characters. Sulu using green peas as an example to answer a Percy rickshaw-wallah's question is a gem. A lady Ola driver nonchalantly talks about how her husband left her when she starts going for work, but we still feel her pain. An employee is blamed for an error he didn't commit. As his boss continues to harangue him, we want the man to retaliate. But he doesn't because, like many of us, he has to cling to his okay-paying job to sustain. Director Suresh Triveni has done a really good job of knowing the vibe of the commoners, which is evident in many scenes.

But he and the writers reserve their best when crafting the relationship between Sulu and Manav. Be it their cutesy lovey-dovey moments in the first half or the tension-filled moments in the second, the makers have given a charming vibe to their relationship. You could actually feel that this is a real couple based in a middle-class locality in Mumbai. Also thanks for reminding us about SP Balasubramaniam's underrated gem, the Batata Vada song.

What the director also does well is in handling the lighter moments of the film, especially in the first half. The DOP Saurabh Goswami keeps the frames simple and yet effusive. All the songs are good, with Rafu, Ban Jaa Rani and Manva Likes To Fly being the pick of the lot.

The bad

Unfortunately, after an affable first half, the second half suffers from a slow-pacing, melodramatic treatment. It is a given that Sulu's job will not go well with her family and it will affect her emotional balance. But a little less melodrama would have made these scenes feel less heavy. However, for me, it is not the family scenes that were a problem. It was the rushed job done by the writers in depicting her RJ life where the movie slacked. First of all, it takes a really long time for Sulu to get her first RJ gig. But bar for a few moments, the scenes at the Radio station felt superficial.

It is difficult to understand what made Dhupia's character bear Sulu's naivety so much that she leaves everything just to listen to her babble. Come on, you are the boss of a radio station and you have a lot already on your plate. Why focus on one person so much? Sulu's meteoric success at her job is suddenly confined to a couple of scenes only. The placement of Hawa Hawai 2.0 feels forced in the narrative. Then there is the track of Sulu's son. We have no clue why he is bullied in the class, when he is shown quite street-smart in the beginning. The fact that this track plays an important link to the proceedings makes the plothole annoying. Even the soft climax comes off as a huge disappointment, as the makers felt an urgency to tie up things without explaining what's happening to us properly.

There is also slight niggle in my mind that Triveni is doing with Vidya Balan what Gauri Shinde did with Alia Bhatt in Dear Zindagi. There are a couple of scenes that I feel are depicted in such a way to show Vidya's mettle as a performer. Thankfully, she never disappoints, but when it comes to pacing, these scenes surely jar.

The performances

After a rather loud performance in Begum Jaan, it is back to brilliant form for Vidya Balan. Looking the part so right, she charms the hell out of you with her brilliant act. Let's hope that Bollywood writes more such roles, as Vidya proves once again that she has a lot more to give us when it comes to her acting prowess. Just check out that scene when she insists on singing the full mukda of Koyal Si Teri Bolo and you will know what I mean. While Vidya is awesome, the standout performer has been Manav Kaul. Playing a loving but insecure husband, Kaul gets all the nuances right. His character could have ended being selfish and despicable, but his endearing performance makes us feel for what he is going through.

Neha Dhupia is fine as the benevolent boss, while RJ Malishka doesn't get much scope. I also wonder why Bollywood doesn't utilise the talented Vijay Maurya much. He is too good here. Special mention should also be given to Trupti Khamkar who plays the Ola driver. Though she only has a couple of scenes, she shines in them.

The verdict

Tumhari Sulu is definitely a feel-good movie for the family audiences, bolstered by charming performances from Vidya Balan and Manav Kaul. Though the movie suffers from lag and heaviness in the second half, its good intentions, as well as the chemistry between the lead pair, make the proceedings bearable enough. We only wish they could have tied up things better in the climax. Still an endearing effort from the entire team. Go for it!

Rating: 3.5 stars

Tumhari Sulu Movie Review: Vidya Balan plays a RJ in the film (Image courtesy: YouTube)

Vidya Balan has a distinctive laugh that starts somewhere deep in her belly and bubbles its way upwards to her throat before bursting out and filling the room. Her voice has a rich timbre that presents immense possibilities. In Lage Raho Munnabhai (2006), Balan played a radio jockey, but apart from stretching out the vowels in her daily "Good Morning greeting, the role required her to do little else.

Advertising filmmaker Suresh Triveni's sparkling directorial debut Tumhari Sulu finally puts Balan's textured voice and uninhibited chortle to proper use. Balan plays a housewife who hosts a late-night radio show in Tumhari Sulu. The voice becomes richer and sexier, and the laughs are plentiful as Balan's Sulochana has a life-altering adventure (until reality catches up with her).

It starts with a malfunctioning television set. Ashok (Manav Kaul) cannot get customer service to repair the equipment. His wife Sulochana is a collector of trivial accomplishments she is a lime-and-spoon race expert and a winner of consumer goods contests. Sulochana has had an incomplete education and is considered the family dunce but she is bursting with can-do spirit. She reckons that she can exchange the pressure cooker she has won on a radio show for a television set. Sulochana makes her way from her home in the distant Mumbai suburb Virar to a world vastly different the swanky radio statio, where she gets more than she bargained for.

Encouraged by a vacancy for a late-night radio spot, Sulochana auditions for the job, and persuades the station boss Maria (Neha Dhupia) that she has the ability to field calls from lonely hearts after sundown.

Sulochana's ascent coincides with Ashok's increasingly shaky position at the textile manufacturing company where he has been slaving for years and their son Pranav's troubles at school. Director Triveni's soft feminist fable seeks its resolution within the comforting confines of the family, but it is mindful of the price women pay for stepping out of their domestic cocoons.

The movie is neatly poised between dreams (up until the interval) and wakefulness (the post-interval section). Sulochana's newfound freedom fundamentally alters her equation with Ashok. A less sunny-tempered movie would have made more of their tensions and acknowledged that the cuts and tears in the marital fabric cannot be mended so easily. But Sulochana's infectious optimism drives the story towards a resolution that ensures that everybody goes home with a big smile and a warm feeling.

In some ways, Tumhari Sulu plays out like a feelgood tribute to Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar (1963), in which housewife Arti (played by Madhabi Mukherjee) becomes a saleswoman to boost her family's meagre income. Arti's newly minted independence most deeply affects her husband (Anil Chatterjee), and Ray ensures that the couple's decision to face their challenges together can be regarded either as a joint victory or a pragmatic compromise.

Although Triveni opts for a more affirming option, his movie is attuned to the sensitivities of the challenges faced by working women. The film is packed with perfectly pitched characters, which include Neha Dhupia's Maria and Sulochana's cynical producer Pankaj (Vijay Maurya). Ashok too is much more than a foil to Sulochana, with his tattered ego and doubts over his suddenly successful wife getting equal play. Manav Kaul's beautifully poised performance ensures that Ashok emerges as a full-blown character in a movie dedicated to its female lead. Kaul doesn't seek to steal any scenes from Balan, but co-exists with her in keeping with the overall theme that it takes two hands for applause (and a marriage) to be meaningful.

The movie derives its strength from its unhurried narrative (it clocks in at 140 minutes, some of which are disposable) and rich observations of middle-class suburban existence. Life is moulded into a movie plot, filled with the clutter of domesticity, everyday humour (the screenplay is by Triveni, with additional dialogue by Maurya) and hilarious tributes to 1980s film music.

Balan's imitation of SP Balasubrahmanyam's accent in the Batata Wada song from the 1987 movie Hifazat proves her mimicry skills. The movie itself is a tribute to her ability to burrow deep under the skin of her character. Balan delivers a career-best performance in Tumhari Sulu, moving from eternal optimist to bruised realist without missing a beat. Triveni's respect for his heroine's abilities results in several leisurely sequences of comedy and poignance, including a moving moment of admission that her ambition has disturbed the domestic peace. Balan delivers the belly-shaking laughs and heart-wringing tears with equal deftness. Sulu has her listeners at hello, but Balan scores from the moment she enters the frame all the way to the final close-up, where her face fills the screen and illuminates it.