Rating : 3.8/5
Genre : All-in-one
Year : 2020
Running time : 2 hours 29 minutes
Director : Anurag Basu
Cast : Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Abhishek Bachchan, Sanya Malhotra, Aditya Roy Kapoor, Fatima Sana Sheikh, Rohit Saraf, Pearle Maaney
Kidwise : PG
Ludo is a 4 person game. And life is Ludo, with our four players being : Bittu (Bachchan), Alok (Rao), Akash (Kapoor) and Rahul (Saraf). Bittu is a small time conman, and used to be the right hand man of Sattu Bhaiya (Tripathi) before he left the life of crime to settle down in happy domesticity. Alok aka Aloo runs a restaurant and pines for Pinky (Shaikh), who ditched him in favor of a more favorable alliance. Akash must clear the air with ex-girlfriend Shruti (Malhotra), and lands up at her home, where wedding preparations are in full swing, 3 days before her marriage to another man. And Rahul is the innocent bystander who gets caught up in a crime.
These 4 stories of different people, start to intersect and then things really get interesting. Some of the main events in the film are shown through different perspectives – sometimes we are taken back in time, and shown a different angle, introduced to a fact we did’t know before. You connect the dots, and the little a-ha moments make the film.
Any self-respecting crime caper has to have a villain, bags full of cash and madcap chases. Ludo has all that and some unpredictable quirks. There’s humor, drama, love, pathos. There’s also an impressive and large star cast, all of whom do reasonably well.
Of the 4 main protagonists, Rajkummar Rao stood out. He was hilarious as the helpless-in-love Alok. Abhishek Bachchan does decently but the role is such a downer, and Bachchan seems to be caught up in reprises of the same “regretful” character portrayals. Here, his character gets caught up in some emotionally drippy scenes with a kid. And I’ve had it up to here with precocious, cutesy little somethings spouting smart nothings; I wish Bollywood would lay off and just let kids in films be kids.
Aditya Roy Kapor and Sanya Malhotra as the main romantic pair in the film have great chemistry; they keep demurring but we know how it will end! Pankaj Tripathi is in his heyday, and a hoot here as wily mobster Sattu Bhai.
Ludo starts very well, but starts to lose steam as it goes along. Also, director Basu casts himself in a small cameo as a “sutradhaar” or prescient narrator – which seemed gimmicky. Still Ludo is a fun watch; just don’t expect it to match Basu’s Barfi qualitywise.
Kidwise: Gunslinging and violence. Adult situations are implied but nothing explicit is shown on screen.
