Movie review: Sonali Cable is a case of lost signal

Movie: Sonali Cable
Cast: Rhea Chakraborty, Ali Fazal, Anupam Kher, Swanand Kirkire, Raghav Juyal, Smita Jaykar, Mrigendra Nilima Priya
Direction: Charu Dutt Acharya
Rating:

Sonali Cable offers few surprises

Imagine your friendly neighbourhood cablewallah, self-confessedly driven by pluck to survive the big bad city; never needed college education for a living. Runs a neat little bandwidth business too, with a band of dedicated local boys.

Now imagine the cablewallah is actually cablewaali. The name is Sonali, which explains the title of the film, and she is a girl from the ghetto doing brisk business catering to a thriving mohalla somewhere in Mumbai.

Sonali Cable draws its USP wholly from the fact that it does a gender reversal on a calling we normally associate with men. The Cable Girl as a character would seem like a brainwave. It twists the standard David-versus-Goliath formula which the scripts banks on, and which Bollywood has been hawking forever.

Plus, look at the packaging option it leaves on the posters. The satchel of tools looks sexier on Rhea Chakraborty than it ever did on Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy. That's quite an appetiser for a dishy deal. Dish antenna ditties need to be pitched with the right wavelength too, for a quick audience connect. Sonali Cable had its groundwork right. Too bad, it literally loses signal at the narrative stage. Debutant writer-director Charu Dutt Acharya seems confident that an unusual protagonist is enough to score a hit. He obviously overlooked the fact that unusual characters need the support of solid writing, too.

Acharya's Sonali is a spunky cablewaali. If Rhea, Bollywood's one-film-old latest import from the southern screen, needed an authorbacked relaunch, she cannot complain of runtime shortage in this screenplay. The self-made Sonali is a marked departure from her rather filmi debut in Mere Dad Ki Maruti last year. Rhea had the scope to shine with this role. She tries earnestly. Too earnestly in fact, to leave an impression.

Sonali's business, aided by the local MLA, is on cruise mode with help from her foreign-returned loverboy (Ali Fazal, who seems to be turning an expert at playing the chief male prop in heroine-oriented flicks). Then, problem arises. A communications giant (Anupam Kher) threatens to wipe her out of business. Sonali and gang decide to fight rather than give up.

There is predictability about that story idea which, you realise after a point, starts pulling the film down. Sonali Cable offers few surprises.

The film ends up a clumsy attempt at entertaining, almost like those pirated prints of brand new releases that local cablewallahs would often telecast on the sly in a bid to retain subscriber base.