Ludo (2020) : Movie Review -

Since the corona pandemic and lockdown bollywood audience has got literally nothing watchful that can be enjoyed like a real good film and then some films tried to gain benefit through OTT release. But these OTT releases saw huge drop in number of audience and in quality of films. Now it's fair to say that the new joining in the list is this human anthology directed by Anurag Basu called Ludo. When there were no expectations after goofy trailer, Ludo was unexpectedly looking a clever film and was almost certain to end as an Unexpected Diwali Dhamaka and suddenly last 20-25 minutes pulled it down to join the said elite club.

Ludo has multiple stories connected to each other somehow, some way, somewhere and so the plotting settles nicely at the beginning. The introduction scenes of this big cast takes lot of time but not harmful at all due to entertaining and engaging storytelling. Every charcter is established perfectly and almost every character provides some genuine laughters and hilarious scenes. Especially, Rajkummar Rao and Pankaj Tripathi have got some hysterical and interesting dialogues. The rest of the characters are normal yet connectable because of simplicity. Ludo gains more momentum with the narration theory handled by Yamraj and some adult stuff involved in it.

Acting wise as already mentioned Rajkummar Rao and Pankaj Tripathi are the table toppers followed by Aditya Roy Kapoor, Fatima Sana Sheikh and Sanya Malhotra. The supporting cast is okay but most importantly everyone has got enough screentime to make an impact. It's the writing of the characters which doesn't show same cleverness to every character, some are blessed with intelligence while some are cursed and totally destroyed. The destruction of characters feels strong in last 30 minutes when they are seen doing rubbish and insensible things.

Ludo is 150 minutes long film and still has enough grip to hold you on your seat. However, couple of songs are damn boring and useless which fooled the editor's eyes. Dialogues are too funny and has vulgar touch, afterall it's Netflix and without abusive language they are incomplete. No doubts, the dialogues make you laugh, make you think sometimes even though the presentation of that particular scene is rough. Ludo could have been a great anthology if there was no melodrama and dumb romance because in crime dramas you don't want typical emotions to jeopardize entire smart narrative. Anurag Basu first promises you a clever film set in dramatic mess and then himself makes dumb moves to solve the mess. How disappointing it was to see this surprisingly good film going down as expected before those surprises. Overall, Ludo is just another average flick saved by some funny scenes even though at early stage it was way ahead of expectations.

RATING - 5/10*