Film: Ugly Aur Pagli

Director: Sachin Khot

Producer: Pritish Nandy, Rangita Pritish Nandy

Banner: Pritish Nandy Communications

Cinematography: Somak Mukherjee

Editor: Hemal Kothari

Music Director: Anu Malik

Cast: Mallika Sherawat, Ranvir Shorey, Tinu Anand, Sushmita Mukherjee, Vihang Nayak, Bharti Achrekar, Payal Rohatgi, Sapna Bhavnani

Special Appearance: Zeenat Aman

Rating: 3/5

Unusual pairings work. Mallika Sherawat goes all out and proves this a second time round. However, PNC’s Ugly and Pagli, directed by Sachin Khot, doesn’t work for this ‘casting coup’ alone. A well-made film always works because it is well-made and Ugly aur Pagli is quite so.

Ugly aur Pagli is a romantic comedy, one that not only brings laughs but also smiles. It is the story of a girl and boy, one having had lost everything in love and one waiting for love to happen at every corner. It is destined that the twain shall meet and so they do. They become thick, leading to a number of hilarious episodes and the eventual falling in love. But love is no laughing matter.

This is the key to the film’s success in translating itself; that the presence of love in a comic film is not trivialised. But it is not dramatised for mere effect as well. The director handles love with the same alacrity, balance and sensitivity as he does the lighter moments. Love, as the central theme is all-pervasive and it gets a juicy treatment in its various shades of anticipation, joy, pain, enthusiasm, longing, frustration, holding on and letting go. At the same time it does not overbear itself onto the comic theme or audience’s emotions.

The exactly same maybe said about the comedy. It gets a wider berth than the romantic angle and falls in between gagsy, cheeky and screwball. Sachin employs a lot of situational comedy and real-life humour that keeps the nerve of the film steady. He manages to concoct, in idea and execution, unconventional situations that stay just this side of over-the-top. He avoids a major pitfall of comic directors which is repetition. After the first and...