2 Stars (out of 4)
The first movie from Rajkummar Rao’s production house Kampa Film fits right in with his recent filmography. Toaster is a Netflix Original dark comedy, just like other Netflix Original dark comedies starring Rao: Ludo, Guns & Gulaabs, and Monica, O My Darling. While the new movie gets a lot of things right, it fumbles some important parts of the story.
It also inadvertently makes a case against the current trend of starting a movie with a shocking in medias res scene to grab attention before flashing back in time. At the open, Rao’s character Ramakant is shown digging a grave in an abandoned theme park. Then the action flashes back to a few weeks earlier, as a supposedly upright politician Amol Amre (Jitendra Joshi) is shown philandering with a pair of white women. A junkie named Glen (Abhishek Banerjee) obtains a video of the affair and uses it to threaten the politician. Both scenes hint at problems to come, but we expect stakes to escalate as the story progresses. A preview isn’t always a hook.
Those scenes are followed by the audience’s chronological introduction to the miserly Ramakant, which would’ve been a much more interesting way to start the movie. While out on his morning jog, Ramakant swipes a bananas from a fruit vendor while complaining over the phone about a six-rupee discrepancy in his telecom bill. He demands a cash refund, pretending to be an elderly man near death while exercising next to an old man with a walker. We learn that he’s a guy who’s happy to lie in order to save a few pennies. The demonstration of his character is a much better hook than the two throwaway opening scenes.
For all his faults, Ramakant is devoted to his wife Shilpa (Sanya Malhotra). She’s ready for kids, but Ramakant thinks they’re a bad return on investment. That doesn’t stop him from lying to their landlady Mrs. D’Souza (Seema Pahwa) about starting a family in order to negotiate cheaper rent.
Shilpa hits her limit with Ramakant’s stinginess when he proposes spending 500 rupees (about $5) on a gift for their guru’s daughter’s wedding. Instead, she buys a fancy 4-slice toaster for 4,999 rupees. It pains Ramakant to spend that much, but he’s happy to brag about his generosity to the bride’s family.
The next morning, it’s revealed that the groom-to-be got his secret girlfriend pregnant, leading the wedding to be cancelled. Against all rules of decorum and human decency, Ramakant goes to the bride’s house to ask for his toaster back. He’s outraged to learn they donated the gifts to an orphanage, so he breaks into the orphanage to steal the toaster.
At best, Ramakant is a grey character, but his relationship with Shilpa gives hope that he can be a better man than he is. Things get more dangerous when his toaster thievery plot intersects with the politician blackmail subplot. Turns out junkie Glen is Mrs. D’Souza’s son, and Ramakant’s neighbor. Tragedy ensues, raising the stakes for Ramakant both legally and morally.
About halfway through, Toaster loses its way. Ramakant crosses a moral line that is very hard to come back from, at least not without some kind of confession, atonement, or karmic justice. But Toaster treats this as just a plot point, and Ramakant isn’t transformed by what happens, making for an unsatisfying conclusion.
There’s some very clever dialogue and really good performances, particularly from Malhotra and Farah Khan in a funny cameo as the owner of the orphanage. Upendra Limaye is also entertaining as the politician’s henchman. Rao’s performance is in keeping with the many other “ordinary man” roles he’s played over his career.
The film gets bogged down with a segment of the story that involves an elderly neighbor, Pherwani Aunty, played by Archana Puran Singh. Maybe the section will hit with Singh’s fans, but it overstayed its welcome for me and added to the sense that the filmmakers didn’t calibrate the story correctly. Of all of Rao’s Netflix Original dark comedies, Toaster ranks last.
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