Khandaani Shafakhana

Cast: Sonakshi Sinha, Varun Sharma, Annu Kapoor, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Nadira Babbar, Rajiv Gupta, Badshah

Director: Shilpi Dasgupta

Producer: Bhushan Kumar, Mahaveer S. Jain, Mrigdeep Singh Lamba, Krishan Kumar, Divya Khosla Kumar

Plot:

Khandaani Shafakhana Movie Review Rating: 2/5 Stars (Two stars)

Star Cast: Sonakshi Sinha, Varun Sharma, Badshah, Annu Kapoor, Rajiv Gupta, Priyansh Jora, Kulbhushan Kharbanda

Director: Shilpi Dasgupta

What’s Good: The core idea of the film is its heart but the at-fault story is the polluted lungs around it, yup it dies! (subtle plug-in of a social message: smoking kills)

What’s Bad: That’s extremely hard to decide, let’s settle in for script as of now!

Loo Break: A mandatory one, even if you’re not tempted to take one, just take one!

Watch or Not?: Yes, on a Sunday, months from now, if you’ve left with nothing to do

User Rating:

The story starts with a commercial in which we see Hakim Tarachand aka Mamaji (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) talking about venereal diseases through a television advertisement. It fast forwards 20 years and we see Tarachand’s niece Baby Bedi (Sonakshi Sinha) living with her mom & brother away from her uncle. Mamaji, who used to run a sex clinic, passes away & leaves all the responsibility on Baby.

To repay a loan, Baby agrees to run the clinic but according to the will if she wants to sell it she’ll have to run it for at least six months. Now, during this time, she meets different kind of people through which she realises how important this business is. She tries to fit in and spread good word-of-mouth about it but is dissed by the orthodox society. What happens next doesn’t matter, because nothing happens.

Khandaani Shafakhana Movie Review: Script Analysis

Gautam Mehra’s story lays its base with good intent, but what doesn’t work in its favour is the forced drama built around it. We know our society is judgy but after a point of time, the story starts highlighting the shit out of them and that becomes the issue. We’ve people calling penis as human’s organ, sperm as wiggle Wiggle and all of these could’ve worked if they had a proper narrative to back them.

Few laughs here and there, a mildly funny (and lame) courtroom sequence and that’s about it; rest of the story just gets lost under the burden of a serious topic. Rishi Punjabi’s camera captures the vintage-filled tints of Punjab. The clinic’s set-design gives a warm feeling resulting in a delightful view.

Khandaani Shafakhana Movie Review: Star Performance

Sonakshi Sinha, yet again, gets a very uni-dimensional character barring a couple of emotional scenes. She’s confident with her performance, but there’s no scope to shine because of a lazy screenplay. Unfortunately, there is no second-best performer in the film because many of the great talents are wasted.

Starting from Annu Kapoor, who is literally clueless of what he’s performing to Kulbhushan Kharbanda who is used an emotional prop throughout. Varun Sharma has been badly sidelined; I know it was a supporting performance but the makers should’ve banked on him for comic relief.

Badshah is Badshah! He just rocks his blingy attire and acts like he’s in his real life. Again, his cameo should’ve been moulded properly. Debutant Priyansh Jora shines in the little screen-space he gets. But, because his character is a worthless addition, he will go completely unnoticed.