Film: Married to America Cast: Archana Joglekar, Chetan Pandit, Raghuvir Yadav, Jackie Shroff, Shweta Tiwari, Ashok Samarth, Akhilendra Mishra and Ganesh Yadav.
Director: Dilip Shankar
Johnson Thomas
Well acted, but lacked depth This film is as innocuous as its moniker suggests. In fact one wonders why a monker that is so unrelated to that which transpires on film, was used in the first place. And that to by a director( Kaal chakra, Atank hi Atank) who by no means, can be considered a spring chicken. Its all about garnering eyeballs I guess and the moniker 'Married to America'can at best generate some amount of curiosity for the film which the decadent and forgotten star cast would never enjoy. Imagine Archana Joglekar better known some 15- 20 years ago as a TV actress and Marathi cine star who managed to do a single digit count of Bollywood films, as a present day heroine. Then there is Chetan Pandit, at best a character actor( recently seen as the school teacher father in Agneepath), doing the central lead with Raghuvi Yadav, Jackie Shroff and Akhilendra Mishra spreading their considerable weight around in second fiddle, and you would guess , and rightly so, that this film has a very limited audience to start off with. The story too, which appears to have a faint resemblance to the recently tanked 'Dam 999'is not the usual masala we encounter. Yet there is nothing in this offering to make you sit up and take notice.
The film begins in erratic fashion. We see a married NRI couple expose the fissures in their 5 year old relationship. The husband Ravi Malhotra( Chetan Pandit) is a typical MCP who sees his wife Anjali, as a housekeeper and not a home maker. He is too caught up in his work life as an architect- engineer in a premier multinational construction giant, to pay heed to his wifes craving for his attent. ion. To top that, he is now seized of a disaster - a portion of the dam constructed by his firm, in Darbhanga, Bihar, India , gets washed away by floods.
He has to make a quick trip to India to investigate. So off he goes , leaving his wife even more bereft and distraught by the yawning distance between them exacerbated by his sudden trip to India. Once in India he discovers evidence to contradict the state governments claims of substandard design and construction levelled against himself and his firm. But when he attempts to bring it to the notice of the Chief Minister, he is abducted.
After waiting a few weeks , his wife decides to come to India and track him down, armed with his latest ( post abduction) fax message.She too gets kidnapped.
The rest of the movie focuses on how the two with help from friendly saboteurs, get away and not only realise their true worth to each other but also manage to expose the shenanigans of the political class. So its a promising enough story but the screenplay( all credited to Dilip Shankar) is a bit too warped and the treatment just too fanciful and loud.
To add to the misery theres an accompanying background score , more fanciful than the screenplay requires, by Dr Anwar Hussain, that drowns out all the nuances( if any).
Whats left , are the performers who do manage to give some respectability to this venture. Archana Joglekar( well into her 40's) does a fairly decent job but she cannot carry an entire film on her shoulders. Neither can the talented Chetan Pandit. Jackie Shroff. Akhilendra Mishra, Ashok Samarth, Shweta Tiwari and Ganesh Yadav, do their best to make it all look earnest but it doesn't seem to be enough. The music( song and dance) only prolongs the agony. This film could have done better with a little more depth and understatement.