Atrangi Re Movie Review: Vivid imagination, but what’s really going on?

Updated On: 25 December, 2021 07:14 AM IST | Mumbai | Mohar Basu

The film, which is about love and appreciating its ability to transform lives, also delves into emotional abuse and childhood trauma

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Atrangi Re

Atrangi Re
U/A: Drama
Dir: Aanand L Rai
On: Disney+Hotstar
Cast: Sara Ali Khan, Dhanush, Akshay Kumar
Rating: 2.5/5

Atrangi Re is ridiculous. It is mind bogglingly frustrating, especially in the first hour. Since it’s on Disney + Hotstar, expect yourself to frequently want to press the pause button. But I urge you to stay with this frantic tale of love. Director Aanand L Rai expects you to be a flight risk and thus he casts one of the country’s most delightful actors - Dhanush, to help his film power through the shaky start. His arresting screen presence makes you stay. Rai and his long-time collaborator Himanshu Sharma place their material somewhere between bizarre and poetic. On the surface, it’s a twisted love story. A feisty young girl - Rinku is forcefully married off. The character is a loud, shrieking, intolerable mess and Sara Ali Khan might not be consistently good at it but she is sincere at making sense of her. Rinku is angry, aggressive, looking for love and battling her own demons. It’s only when her new husband Vishu (played by Dhanush) enters her life, that she is compelled to sift through own trauma. Their marriage isn’t one of love. Because Rinku is in love with Sajad - a magician, years older than her and Muslim, which is why they aren’t together.

Atrangi Re is disjointed and contrived. It’s hard to say too much about its misgivings without revealing spoilers. The film’s first hour banks too much on Rahman’s sweeping score to undo its wrongs and Dhanush single-handedly holds forte. Till that point, the story goes out of its way to make viewers despise Rinku. And then the film shifts its energy and tone, taking us along on a soul-searching quest to understand the myriad layers of human affection. In a nutshell, Atrangi Re is about the enduring nature of love and its ability to transform and heal. The narrative also delves into emotional abuse, childhood trauma, social evils etc. The fact that Akshay Kumar’s Sajjad is a magician lends to the film a mystical, fairytale-like-feel that is aided by the brilliant cinematography of Pankaj Kumar.

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