Mumbai Movie Studios, Ideas The Entertainment Company and Abhinay Mumbai Production’s Lochya Zaala Re (Marathi) is a comedy.
Aditya (Ankush Chaudhari) is a bachelor who lives in Birmingham. He lies to his Satara-based uncle, Sampatrao Ghorpade (Sayaji Shinde), that he is married to Pooja. When Sampatrao comes visiting Aditya, he has to introduce friend Manav’s (Siddharth Jadhav) wife, Dimple (Vaidehi Parshurami), as Pooja. The comedy that follows is what the film is all about because it’s Manav and Dimple’s wedding anniversary when Sampatrao is in Birmingham.
Suresh Jairam has based his story on a stage-play of the same name. The story also borrows from the Hindi film All The Best. Paritosh Painter’s screenplay has reasonably funny moments but it does stretch at places. In other words, the screenplay is not consistently funny. After a point of time, the audience gets a feeling of a contrived effort on the part of the writer to make the audience laugh. The second half, especially the latter portion, becomes boring or, at least, is not hilarious enough, at places. Prasad Khandekar’s dialogues are good but again, not throughout the drama.
Ankush Chaudhari acts well in the role of Aditya but his comedy is not upto the mark. Siddharth Jadhav is very good as Manav. His comic sense of timing is excellent. Vaidehi Parshurami is fair as Dimple but she also falls short of expectations in light scenes. Sayaji Shinde performs ably as Sampatrao Ghorpade. Prasad Khandekar has been wasted as Aditya’s friend, Sandy. Resham Tipnis is alright as Sandy’s wife, Ruby. Vijay Patkar provides ordinary support as Dimple’s father. Others are average.
Paritosh Painter and Ravi Adhikari have handled the drama fairly well but their narrative style and direction are unable to overcome the shortcomings of the script and thereby make the film a laugh riot. Chinar-Mahesh’s music is so-so, with the title track being fairly good. Their background music is slightly better. Mandar Cholkar’s lyrics are alright. Seema Desai’s choreography is nothing to shout about. Sanjay Memane’s camerawork is appealing. Prashant Bidkar’s art direction is okay. Nilesh Navnath Gavand’s editing is alright but could’ve been sharper.
On the whole, in spite of some hilarious scenes, Lochya Zaala Re remains an ordinary fare. Its good star cast is its biggest plus point.
Released on 4-2-’22 at Plaza (daily 2 shows) and other cinemas of Bombay thru UFO Cine Media Network. Publicity: good. Opening: dull.