Viacom18 Studios, Outsiders Films and BLM Pictures’ Dhak Dhak (UA) is a road trip film. Four ladies from different backgrounds embark on a trip to Khardung La in Leh on motorcycle. While three of them are young, the fourth is a grandma.
Sky (Fatima Sana Shaikh), Uzma (Dia Mirza), Mahi (Ratna Pathak Shah) and Manjari (Sanjana Sanghi) decide to undertake a road trip to Khardung La mountain pass in Leh. Each of them has a different reason for making the trip. The film talks about the hardships they face and whether they ultimately make it to Khardung La or not.
Parijat Joshi and Tarun Dudeja have written a heartfelt story about four ladies who come with their own baggage, and bond during their trip. Their screenplay has a number of entertaining light moments but the heartfelt and emotional scenes are quite predictable. Yet, there is a certain warmth about the drama which touches the heart. The early part of the post-interval portion loses its grip on the audience but the latter part is definitely better. The duo’s dialogues, with additional dialogues by Anvita Dutt, are very good.
Dia Mirza is wonderfully restrained in her performance as Uzma. Fatima Sana Shaikh does full justice to her character of Sky and performs beautifully. Ratna Pathak Shah does a phenomenal job as Mahi. Sanjana Sanghi stands her own with a promising performance as Manjari. Ozgur Kurt makes his mark as Bernett. Benedict Garrett makes his presence felt in the role of Moshe. Dhirendra Dwivedi is effective as Shabbir. Harshpal Singh is endearing as Prabjot. Kalhirroi Tziafeta is good as Martha. Abhishek Sengupta (as Pappu cleaner), Ajeet Kumar (as the auto driver), Alka (as the mother-in-law of Mahi’s younger daughter), Alok Gutch (as Om Tauji), Aman Sharma (as the biker at Hindostan Motors), Dr. Lakha Lehri (as Taran truck driver), Gagandeep Singh Dadiala (as Mahi’s husband), Heena Seth (as Mahi’s elder daughter), Jai Singh (as the puncture guy), Maahi Jain (as Zoya), Poonam Gurung (as the kung fu nun), Ayush Nathani and Shamangi Sharma (as the honeymoon couple), Sheryl Das Mehta (as Mahi’s younger daughter), Shivang Rajpal (as Manjari’s fiancé) and the rest lend good support.
Tarun Dudeja’s direction is nice. He has handled the scenes with maturity and has also extracted good work out of his actors. Music (Anurag Saikia, Jasmine Sandlas, Mohan Kannan, Osho Jain, Raghav-Arjun, Rishi Dutta and Shruti Pathak) is appealing. Lyrics (Avinash Chouhan, Baba Bulleh Shah, Gurpreet Saini, Jasmine Sandlas, Kundan Vidyarthi, Mohan Kannan, Osho Jain and Raghav-Arjun) are meaningful. Anurag Saikia’s background music is impactful. Sreechith Vijayan Damodar’s camerawork is eye-filling. Abdul Aziz Khokhar’s action and stunt scenes are alright. Nilesh Eknath Wagh’s production designing is appropriate. Editing (by Manish Sharma) is crisp.
On the whole, although Dhak Dhak is an entertaining fare, its box-office performance will not be anywhere close to its merits because awareness about the film is poor. Also, there are no star names to attract the public to the cinemas. One can’t expect collections to pick up phenomenally because the content is not unique or earth-shatteringly novel.
Released on 13-10-’23 at Metro Inox (daily 1 show) and other cinemas of Bombay by Viacom18 Motion Pictures. Publicity & opening: poor. …….Also released all over.