Star Studio18, Elemen3 Entertainment LLP and Lalaland Entertainment Ltd.’s Single Salma (UA) is the story of a middle-class, middle-aged lady, Salma (Huma Qureshi), who refuses to marry because she has taken over the responsibility of settling her siblings and looking after her aged parents. She has a good job which enables her to run the house and also service the loan taken against the large family mansion in which they live.
One day, Salma’s family gets a marriage proposal for her from the family of Sikander (Shreyas Talpade). Although Sikander is not very literate, his simplicity bowls Salma over and she agrees to marry him. As luck would have it, Salma has to go on a two-month official trip to London. While her own orthodox father (Kanwaljit Singh) is against Salma’s foreign trip, Sikander is cool about the same.
In London, Salma befriends Meet (Sunny Singh). During her two-month stay there, Salma also comes into her own, much to the consternation of her family back home. Salma returns to India. It’s now time for Salma to marry Sikander but is it going to be so simple? Salma is carrying with her the burden of her two-month London stint during which she had, in a way, betrayed Sikander’s faith in her. There’s also the additional burden of dealing with Meet who lands in India to ask for her hand in marriage. What happens finally? Whom does Salma marry? And how did she betray Sikander while in London?
Amina Khan and Ravi Kumar have written a story which starts on a fairly interesting note. The story and the duo’s screenplay progress well in the first half with a lot of entertaining light moments which are quite fresh. The second half, however, looks contrived after a point of time. Salma’s stand in the climax is not at all justified, especially when she expresses her displeasure with Sikander who doesn’t appear to be wrong from any angle. The stance of Salma in the end also makes her appear to be an opportunist and an ungrateful woman, qualities which one wouldn’t want to condone in a heroine. Even otherwise, the post-interval part looks too ‘set up’ to be engaging. Mudassar Aziz’s dialogues are very entertaining and add to the fun element.
Huma Qureshi is very good in the title role. She delivers a natural performance as a confident lady who is often bogged down by circumstances. Shreyas Talpade is natural to the core in the role of Sikander. He evokes laughter at a number of places. His simplicity makes him such a darling of the audience that the climax looks unjustified. Sunny Singh looks handsome and acts with aplomb as Meet. Kanwaljit Singh lends decent support as Salma’s father, Nawab Sahab. Navni Parihar is adequate as Mrs. Shrivastav, colleague of Salma. Nidhi Singh provides wonderful support as Salma’s friend, Ratna. Asif Khan (as Rajiv), Abhishek Singh (as Irshad) and Digvijay Pratap Singh (as Nitesh) make their respective marks with realistic performances. Shiv Kanungo stands out with a fine performance as Babban. Sachin Chaudhary has his moments as Subhan. Lauren Gottlieb makes her presence felt in the role of Zoya. Shobhana Sharma (as Ismat), Mohammad Ebadullah (as Chottan), Som Ganguly (as Sadiq), Prabhat Kumar Lahiri (as Vaikunth Pandey), Sharad Raj Singh (as Rastogi), Shabih Jafri (as Fatima), Arshia Ali (as Abida), Ananya Tripathi (as Momina), Akansha Pandey (as Shabana), Muskan Khan (as Shifa), Aditi Dixit (as Sabiha), Arnav Pandey and Agrema Mishra (both as Ratna’s kids), Naval Shukla (as Maqsood), Devasheesh Mishra (as Trumpet Raja), Aarav Shukla and Aadya Rastogi (both as Shabana’s kids), Sharon Drain (as Felicia), and the others provide the desired support.
Nachiket Samant’s direction is quite nice but an uneven script prompts him to go haywire towards the end. Sohail Sen and Jassi Sidhu’s music is fair but the absence of hit music is a sore point. Lyrics (Mudassar Aziz, Nachiket Samant and Jassi Sidhu) go well with the mood of the film. Piyush-Shazia’s choreography is okay. Sohail Sen’s background music is quite nice. Andrew Boulter and Shakil Abbas Khan’s cinematography is good. Action and stunt scenes (Amar Shetty and Kevin Smith) are functional. Tariq Umar Khan’s production designing is appropriate. Ashish Tripathi and Abhishek Anand’s editing is quite sharp.
On the whole, Single Salma has entertainment value in the first half, but its post-interval portion is not quite palatable. Besides, awareness about the film’s release or, for that matter, about the film itself is so poor that it will turn out to be a box-office dud.
Released on 31-10-’25 at Metro Inox (daily 1 show) and other cinemas of Bombay by JioStar India Pvt. Ltd. Publicity & opening: poor. …….Also released all over. Opening was weak everywhere.
