Peepli Live Review

Aamir Khan seems to be the man with Midas touch, after delivering India' s biggest blockbuster ' 3 Idiots' he is back again but this time as producer bringing us Peepli Live by debutante director Anusha Rizvi.

Of-late we were seeing a lot of Aamir Khan on the small screen attending a lot of reality shows, singing and dancing with all of the contestants; all of it to promote the movie, but does he really need to? He doesn' t, when the product itself is so good why bother, Peepli Live delivers on all counts, this tongue-in-cheek satire presents a serious subject like farmer suicides in the most unexpected way; humor.

Peepli Live very cleverly exposes all of the vultures of our society who are ready to take advantage of a poor farmer, and highlights the plight of farmers in our country, where they have to kill themselves for their families to survive.

Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) is a poor farmer who is about to have his land seized due to an unpaid government loan, a local politician suggests that he commit suicide to take advantage of a government program, which would take care of his family, Natha takes this jest seriously and decides to take the drastic step, unfortunately he is overheard by a scoop-seeking journalist and thus follows a circus of events which descend upon the sleepy town of Peepli located in the heart of Central India.

The film rather than being preachy chooses to hold up a mirror to the society, showing us the true colours of the politicians we choose, the bureaucrats we hire and the electronic media we choose to watch, this movie takes a potshot at all of these people who try their level best to milk the issue to their own benefit.

Natha' s brother Budhia (Raghuveer Gupta) is only too happy to push his brother to do this honorable thing for his family, while his wife Dhaniya (Shalini Vatsa) is busy getting screamed at by Natha' s bed-ridden mother, his son too urges him to commit suicide so that he could use the money to realize his ambition of becoming a policeman.

The news reaches hierarchy of the ruling party and with elections around the corner, the issue threatens to unseat the ruling party. The local and state politicians disagree, with one trying to save him and the other threatens Natha' s brother asking him to make sure he commits suicide.

The manipulative journalists on the other hand are busy with their usual business of making mountains out of a mole hill, interviewing the people of the village, engrossed in a battle to get the highest TRP' s, one journalist even goes as far as to analyze Natha' s faeces to see his emotional state.

In all this ensuing chaos not one of them is bothered about what' s going through poor Natha' s mind. He has the worst luck, everything bad seems to happen to him even when he sleeps the family goat bothers him. Despite being the centre of attention he is lost amongst the crowds of politicians, bureaucrats and journalists.

Just like Suresh Raina scored a Test Century on his debut a few days ago, the debutante director Anusha Rizvi too has scored a century if not a double century with her debut movie; she has managed to extract some fine performances from her actors and serves up a great visual presentation of the story. She has also written the movie, keeping the screenplay tight and crafty, hats-off to her for writing such a funny script on such a serious issue.

As far the performances go each and every actor has done a fantastic job of bringing alive each character, Omkar Das Manikpuri is brilliant, aptly capturing the haplessness of Natha' s character, Raghuveer Yadav coming back on the silver screen after a long time, makes you wonder why did he ever go away. He plays the character of Budhia with sublime ease. Mind you just like Aamir Khan he too has a penchant for working in Oscar-nominated films. All of his three films (Salaam Bombay, Lagaan and Water) have been nominated in the Best Foreign Film category. May be this one will go too, touchwood!, Malaika Shenoy as the glamorous anchor gives a stellar performance drawing from the experience of having anchored a few shows herself, Shalini Vatsa as Dhaniya and Farukh Jaffer as Amma are equally brilliant.

Music of the movie is good with various artistes being used to do the music; it' s mainly folk, very realistic and goes great with the movie, Costumes are good. Cinematography is ably done, nicely capturing the dusty by-lanes of Peepli. The dialogues, which are a highlight of the movie are genuinely funny and original.

All in all a fantastic and a must watch movie for all, which will set the cash registers of the box office ringing and might even go on to become the biggest hit of the year, all thanks to a good product and the tag of Aamir Khan on it.

Rating: ****

Reviewed by: Harshal Anand.

Hide Editor Review.