Tejas Nair
Maharathi is a surprise package of 2008. The cast is well-set and play their characters with absolute finesse. Paresh Rawal & Naseerudin Shah are the vital players. Neha Dhupia, Tara Sharma & Om Puri do equally well. Special mention for Boman Irani.Starting off with a suspense-creating setup, the plot describes the prologue. After 40 minutes, the real side of the plot is revealed. And this is when it gets interesting. It's an edge of the seat thriller in the second half, if you can bypass the monotonous, slow-paced first half.Editing, make-up, costumes, studio setup are all very poor, giving a worn-out display of the whole movie. Cinematography & direction are fine. The writing is good, especially the dialogs towards the end. Other than having few plot holes, Maharathi is a good entertainer. Mildly interesting is what I would dub it!BOTTOM LINE: Recommended. A 6.7 out of 10 for the story, plot & performances.Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YESProfanity/Vulgarity/Sex: No | Nudity: Very Mild | Mouth-Kiss: No | Violence/Gore: Mediocre | Alcohol: Critical | Smoking/Drugs: No | Porn: No
honshu5
Seldom are movies made from a play... & this one goes the right way! The last theater i can remember off hand was AANKHEN... A Bachan & Paresh Rawal.. The movie wasn't quite catchy, but one could imagine the kind of theatrical performances it must have delivered..Today, i saw an actual performance, only difference being, I saw it on the screen.. The way the movie was done, one felt the characters were alive on a stage in front of me!!!The plot of the movie is very good. But the performances are mind blowing! One couldn't have set a better cast, & while the ladies need to do much better, the quartet of Boman, Paresh, Naseer & Om Puri swept me off my feet!While Paresh Raval dominates the movie completely, it is Boman's sharp performance that draws the curtain! I couldn't have spent my Friday night better.It is a movie worth treasuring... Please have a look!
pcsarkar
Gujarati play?? Hmmm.. Its a rip-off of the James Hadley Chase classic, THERE'S ALWAYS A PRICE TAG!! Glyn Nash and Helen Dester try to pass of Dester's suicide as a murder, to claim insurance but things go horribly wrong.. A very poor version of the path-breaking novel, if I may say so!! Chase must be turning in his grave, to see his block busters being produced in all sorts of ways.. without even a wee bit of credit to him. There has also been a TV version of the story, if I remember correctly. I know that it is quite impossible to bring Chase's multi-dimensional characters to life on the screen.. but a little credit or acknowledgment would surely be in order?
Sharique Shamim
Shivam Nair's film Maharathi is a suspense thriller that keeps many questions unanswered till the end. The film comes with some of the finest performance of lead actors but that doesn't make up for the flaws in the script. The film is about how a common man gets the property money of his employer and the legal aspect of making a will is not convincingly clarified..Adapted from a very popular Gujarati play by the same name, Maharathi makes for an interesting watch solely for the performance of almost all its lead actors. But what keeps on striking the viewer constantly are the limitations of a play being adapted to the big screen. Firstly, for a thriller, the plot appears far too stretched, especially in the first half. Then once the first major twist in the plot takes place, what follows is at times, a matter of convenience. OK even if you are willing to forgive some cinematic liberties, what really comes out is not only predictable but also raises many questions..If you want a taste of a desi version of Sleuth, Peter Shaffer's spellbinding play-turned-film, go watch Maharathi. The story may be different, the edge of danger is almost similar.
AD
