Milan Talkies

Story: Anirudh aka Anu ( Ali Fazal ) lives in Allahabad and along with his friends, he makes local movies and also runs a gang that lets students cheat in exams. His life changes completely when he meets Maithili ( Shraddha Srinath ), whose father hires Anu to help her clear her exams.

Review: Milan Talkies is a movie that unabashedly professes its love for commercial cinema. The film’s protagonist, Anu, dreams of being a film director and along with his friends he hangs out at a local theatre named Milan Talkies. The boys dream big as they hustle their way into making low-budget potboilers and when they run out of money, they swindle students, helping them cheat in examinations. Every character in the film either has aspirations of being in showbiz or has an undying love for cinema. So much so, that the central love story also unfolds at the local theatre. While this homage-based treatment is interesting, the film’s execution is nowhere close to its ambitious ideas. With a clunky screenplay and a tedious runtime of 2 hours and 20 minutes, Milan Talkies feels like a drag.

Ali Fazal plays Anu with the right amount of gusto and flair. Action, comedy, romance and drama, he has a lot to do, just as you’d expect from the proverbial hero in a masala movie. But even his earnest performance fades out in a narrative that tries to do too much. There’s the story of a small-town guy aspiring to be a filmmaker, there’s also an arc of a gang of friends sticking with each other through thick and thin, there’s orthodox families resisting ideas like films and love marriages and all of this unfolds around a conflicted love story. There are too many tracks in the movie and director Tigmanshu Dhulia isn’t able to do justice to any one story arc. He’s made films like Haasil, Paan Singh Tomar and Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster, so to see him lose control of the narrative feels a bit unexpected.

Shraddha Srinath as Maithili, makes her debut in Hindi cinema and her performance is top-notch. She has good chemistry with Fazal, too, but the lead pair’s best efforts are wasted in a film that spends too much time exploring cinematic cliches. The casting also feels problematic as actors like Sanjay Mishra, Deep Raj Rana and Tigmanshu are wasted in inconsequential roles. Ashutosh Rana and Sikander Kher get strong parts, but even their characters don’t make any serious impact.

The film has good music by Akriti Kakkar and Rana Mazumder and some scenes, genuinely have good ideas, too. But, those are like flashes in the pan. In a bid to serve up a gourmet of entertainment, Milan Talkies ends up becoming a goulash of commercial fare. The effort to entertain and be dramatic shows and that’s never a good sign for a film celebrating the love of cinema.