Review of Calendar Girls

Release date - 25'th September 2015

One Word which describes the film - Déjà vu

Best Dialogue - 'Yahan pe log rone ke liye kandha nahi dete, marne tak ka intezar karte hai.'

Genre - Drama

Music -Meet Bros Anjjan, Amaal Mallik

Producer - Sangeeta Ahir, Bhandarkar Entertainment

Story & Direction -Madhur Bhandarkar

Cast - Akanksha Puri, Avani Modi, Kyra Dutt, Ruhi Singh, Satarupa Pyne, Keith Sequeira, Mita Vashishth

Budget- 10 Crores approximately

Madhur Bhandarkar is known for making films with strong female characters. Whether it was Tabu in Chandni Bar, Raveena Tandon in Satta, Konkona Sen Sharma in Page 3, Bipasha Basu in Corporate, Neetu Chandra inTraffic Signal, Priyanka Chopra in Fashion or Kareena Kapoor in Heroine each character was well written and managed to touch the audiences heart.

Calendar Girls has five characters Nandita from Hyderabad(Akanksha Puri), Nazneen from London (Avan Modi), Sharon from Goa(Kyra Dutt), Mayuri from Rohtak (Ruhi Singh) and  Paroma from Kolkata (Satarupa Pyne). They are selected by a leading company to pose for that year's calendar.

The girls with their photographer played by Rohit Roy go to Mauritius for the calendar shoot. In just 1 song and 10 minutes the calendar shoot wraps up and the film moves to how the lives of the girls change after their rise to fame. So for the next 1 hour 40 minutes we get to see the same shocking truths, same betrayals, same artificial lives and behaviors which we have seen numerous times.

We see one character telling the other, 'Pakistani ladkiyan bhi utne hi bold kam karti hai jitni baki ladkiya karti hai, balki kabhi kabhi usse jyada bhi', maybe the reason why the film is banned in Pakistan.

Then we have VJ turned actor, Keith Sequeira telling another character ,'Cricket league is desh ka sabse bada gambling adda hai', which reminds you of Emran Hashmi's , Jannat.
Then one character's manager tells her that some big shot is shooting in the neighboring studio and we are shown that the big shot is none other than Madhur Bhandarkar. Madhur tells the girl, 'Mujhe hero ke nakhre nahin jhelne isliye main heroine-oriented films banata hoon' conveniently forgetting that he directed Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji (2011) too.

Khwaishein written by Kumaar, sung by Arijit Singh and composed by Amaal Mallik is a melodious song

Kahaan le aayi khwahishein
Hai dard ki ye jo baarishein
Hai ghalti dil ki yaa phir
Hai waqt ki ye saazishein

But then there was a similar song sung by Shreya Ghoshal and composed by Salim & Sulaiman  in Bhandarkar's last film  Heroine (2012)

Zindagi ko dheere dheere

Dasti hain khwahishein

Aansun ko peete peete
Hansti hain khwahishein
Uljhi hui kashmakash mein
Umar kat jaati hai.

In an interview Bhandarkar said, 'My movies are not judgmental. I just show what happens in our society, sometimes there could be a solution and sometimes there may be none. Life goes on.'

So now that Calendar Girls has not done well at the box office (6 Crores in 7 days),  Madhur should also move on and try to present something new to his fans. 

In a line apart from the 5  debutantes there is nothing new which you haven't seen before and it's a sum total of all the revelations Bhandarkar has shown in his earlier films in all these years.

Time-pass. Can be seen if you have nothing better to do.