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Movie Review: System (2026)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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A lawyer from a wealthy family learns that justice has a price in the courtroom drama System. The film’s politics are in the right place, but tonal incongruities hamper the storytelling.

System opens with a prisoner lamenting that he can’t afford the cost to appeal his unfair sentence, only to hang himself in the next shot. It’s a grim opening that sets the stage for a critique of the Indian justice system.

Then the action shifts to the main character: public prosecutor Neha Rajvansh (Sonakshi Sinha). She’s dropped off at court in an expensive Range Rover. She awkwardly gets ready for court in the stuffy public bathroom, accompanied by a goofy soundtrack of what I described as “Italian gondola” music in my notes. It’s an abrupt tonal shift coming on the heels of a man’s suicide.

Neha is a new prosecutor, and she’s outmatched in her case against a club owner suspected of dealing drugs. Her salvation comes via a run-in with the court’s stenographer, Sarkia (Jyothika). During litigation, we see Sarika mouthing the judge’s decisions before he announces them, so clearly she understands the law better than what her credentials imply. She gives Neha a hint about the case that helps the government secure a conviction, giving Neha her first courtroom victory.

This is important, because Neha’s father Ravi (director Ashutosh Gowariker) has promised her a spot at his prestigious law firm if she wins ten cases in a row. Neha’s brother Alok (Adinath Kothare) already works for their dad, and so does her boyfriend Akshay (Gaurav Pandey).

To get an edge, Neha hires Sarika for a secret side gig helping evaluate cases. Since Sarika is the main breadwinner for family, the conflict of interest is a risk, but she is desperate for money. Unlike Neha’s chauffeur-driven Range Rover, Sarika takes the train to work and walks home to the tiny apartment she shares with her teenage daughter and husband, who is paralyzed.

The partnership between the women opens Neha’s eyes to economic realities outside the posh mansion where she lives with her parents and brother. She’s never questioned how her father made his money or considered those within her social circle particularly cutthroat. She only realizes how ruthless well-funded defense lawyers can be when she has to face off against her father in court.

Neha’s naivete is somewhat surprising, but that may be a matter of casting. Sinha is nearly forty, which, if Neha is approximately the same age, is too old to not understand the biases within the legal system.

Neha’s character development and increasing social awareness are treated with a light tone that feels at odds with the dark nature of the crimes she’s prosecuting. Her busy pseudo-Venetian theme music doesn’t fit alongside cases of rape and murder. A scene of Neha and Sarika dancing at a club is out of place.

That said, Sinha nicely depicts Neha’s evolution into a lawyer who realizes the biases within the system. She and Alok have a moving conversation about the ways living in their father’s shadow warped their growth. Kothare is particularly good in that scene.

Sarika is the more complicated character of the two lead women. She’s a low-paid worker who understands the law as well as judges and lawyers. She’s a devoted wife who’s having an extramarital affair. Jyothika’s performance balances the different sides of her character and makes her sympathetic.

It’s admirable what director Ashwini Iyer Tiwari and her writing team set out to do in terms of messaging in System. They make a compelling case that many people are priced out of affording adequate legal representation, so, sometimes, they must turn to unsavory methods to receive a measure of fairness from an unfair system. The question it poses to its main character is this: is Neha brave enough to turn class traitor for the sake of justice?

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Movie Review: Maa Behen (2026)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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In Maa Behen, a mother and her adult daughters find themselves with a unique problem: how to hide a dead body from their nosy neighbors. The fun, well-acted comedy comes with some sophisticated commentary on the way rumors and reputation shape women’s lives.

Madhuri Dixit plays Rekha, the “maa” from the title. Widowed young, she raised two daughters on her own in a hostile neighborhood. Rekha’s beauty and penchant for wearing sleeveless blouses (gasp!) turned her into an object of lust for the local men and, thus, an object of scorn for the local women.

The film bucks the recent trend of using computer effects to “de-age” stars for flashbacks. Instead, when we’re shown Rekha’s arrival in the neighborhood as a 22-year-old, Dixit looks more or less the same as she does now in her late fifties. A narrator simply says that she hasn’t aged a day, as far as her looks go — a believable explanation given how gorgeous Dixit still is.

Rekha’s oldest daughter is Jaya (Triptii Dimri). She did everything the right way growing up. Her reward is to be trapped catering to the ceaseless appetites of her ungrateful husband Manas (Shardul Bhardwaj), her demanding father-in-law, and her three ravenous brothers-in-law.

Worse, Manas is a regular presence on the social media channels of Jaya’s wild younger half-sister, Sushma (Dharna Durga), an aspiring influencer. Sushma and Manas play up the notion that they might be having an affair, which may not be true but is insulting to Jaya nonetheless.

The girls get a frantic call from Rekha late one night: Mr. Gupta (Ravi Kishan), the neighbor from across the street, lies dead in her kitchen. Rekha says she invited him over to play cards, but he made a sexual advance at her. They tussled, and he fell and hit his head.

Rekha watches a true crime show called “Khalbali” every day, so she’s certain she knows how conceal Gupta’s death and prevent a scandal. They just need to dump his body in the canal the following night. The only problems are that the women can barely lift him, and Gupta’s family is having a huge party to celebrate his daughter’s engagement. Maybe they can just keep him hidden until the wedding is over.

Rekha’s reputation is paramount in the story. A married man visiting her at night and dying in her house would confirm every sordid thing the neighbors have ever said about her. Those rumors dogged Jaya and Sushma as well, who are assumed to be as sexually forward as their mother allegedly is.

Throughout Maa Behen, the audience sees flashbacks to various salacious events in the women’s lives. These are introduced and narrated by the host of the fictional show “Khalbali,” (played by Shrivardhan Trivedi). He’s there to show us what “everybody” knows to be true.

Of course, that’s only one side of the story. But even if Rekha, Jaya, or Sushma were to present an alternative version, would anyone believe them? Such is the power of rumor and the unequal weight given to men’s opinions by society. Whether or not a negative reputation is “deserved” doesn’t matter. Women pay the price regardless.

Director Suresh Triveni and writer Pooja Tolani brilliantly weave social commentary into the story without coming across as preachy. They created characters beset by rumors and simply let us watch how it affects their personalities and experiences. It’s a sign of respect for an audience that is too often condescended to.

Dixit, Dimri, and Durga are terrific as a family at odds with each other as often as they are with the world. It’s a credit to digital creator Durga for fitting in so well in her feature debut, as well as a testament to Dixit’s and Dimri’s generosity and experience for helping her to do so. The rest of the cast nicely fill out the world and contribute to making Maa Behen a really smart, enjoyable movie.

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Movie Review: Kartavya (2026)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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Filmmaker Pulkit’s second Netflix Original feature Kartavya  (“Duty“) deals with the failure of institutions to protect children, just as his gripping 2024 Netflix Original Bhakshak did. His sophomore effort is less successful than his first due to a disjointed plot that lacks surprises.

Since Bhakshak is about a reporter, it’s fitting that Kartavya starts with a journalist’s murder. Reema Dutta (Radhika Chauhan) arrives in the town of Jhamli to investigate a high-profile religious figure named Anand (Saurabh Dwivedi), who she believes is responsible for the disappearance of several children. Despite having a police escort led by Inspector Pawan Malik (Saif Ali Khan), two assailants on a motorcycle — one of whom escapes — kill Reema.

Pawan’s superior officer Keshav (Manish Chaudhari) wants to suspend him immediately, but Pawan talks his boss into giving him and his junior partner Ashok (Sanjay Mishra) a week to close the case.

Before the investigation even begins, Pawan meets with a calamity at home. His younger brother Deepak (Saurabh Abrol) has supposedly eloped with another student from his college, Preeti (Suraksha Gaire), but no one can find them. That’s for the best, as Preeti’s brother and the local panchayat want to murder them in an “honor killing” for marrying across caste lines. Pawan’s father Harihar (Zakir Hussain) insists on waiting for proof before executing the young lovers, but he’s not opposed to the idea.

Pawan and his wife Varsha (Rasika Dugal) find Deepak and Preeti and agree to help them leave town. But then Pawan learns that the escaped assassin who killed Reema is a 16-year-old boy named Harpal (Yudhvir Ahlawat) — one of the missing children she was investigating. Now Pawan has to get this kid safely out of town, too, while his boss and Ashok cower in fear of Anand and his goons.

The story bounces between Pawan working the murder case, Pawan trying to save his brother, Harihar dealing with Preeti’s brother and the local government, and Harpal running from Anand’s cronies. There’s little urgency in these disjointed sequences until they finally come together at the midpoint.

That leaves lots of time for characters to sit around and talk and for Pawan to smoke. Boy, does he like to smoke. The best moments in the film are conversations between Pawan and Ashok because Khan and Mishra are so good together, but Kartavya needs more action.

The story’s thinness is enhanced by a lack of subtext. Characters straight up admit what’s happening, with little in the way of twists. Despite plenty of characters, most of them have little to do. Pawan might as well have been single for as much as Varsha contributes. As the holy man Anand, ex-journalist and debutant actor Dwivedi looks like a creep (no offense), but he’s not as an intimidating as the cops make him out to be.

On the other hand, Saharsh Kumar Shukla puts in a menacing turn as Anand’s henchman Nirmal. Ahlawat also does a nice job portraying young Harpal’s fear and desperation.

Kartavya‘s casting is strange because Khan is playing much younger than he is. He’s 55, but Pawan is 40. I’m not sure how old Hussain is in real life, but he’s only got a few years on Khan, at best. All the grey hairspray in the world isn’t going to make him believable playing Khan’s dad. Even Mishra is just six years older than Khan, so the age gap between the partners doesn’t look as significant as it’s supposed to.

Despite being generally about the same social issue, Kartavya has little to say about institutional failings, compared to Bhakshak. Critique is sidelined in favor of man-on-a-mission directness that feels under-developed. I hoped for more.

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Movie Review: Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa (2026)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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A celebratory get-together turns deadly in the engaging whodunit Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa. Actor-writer-director Rajat Kapoor confines his suspects to a single location, elevating the drama in this murder mystery.

The title is ironic, of course. The film opens with the discovery of Sohrab Handa’s (Vinay Pathak) body, dead in the living room of his vacation home from a slit throat. His friend Jayanti’s (Palomi Ghosh) screams wake the dozen others in the house, all of whom had gathered to celebrate her ten-year anniversary with Raman (Neil Bhoopalam).

Raman calls the local police, led by Inspector Qureshi (Saurabh Shukla), who initially assumes Raman is the culprit because he placed the phone call. Clearly, the cops aren’t going to be much help in solving the crime, but their questions shift the narrative back to earlier in the day, before the murder.

The group of folks at the house owned by Sohrab and his wife Isha (Koel Purie) are old friends and relatives, including Sohrab’s father (M. K. Raina) and younger brother Arun (Chandrachoor Rai). There are a couple of outsiders, including Jayanti & Raman’s friend Chandra (Rajat Kapoor), a psychologist.

Our first clue that Sohrab might not be as beloved as the title suggests is the way he treats Chandra upon meeting him and learning his profession. As the group eats lunch on the vacation house lawn, Sohrab ridicules Chandra for being a psychologist, while simultaneously bullying Jayanti’s timid brother-in-law Sandeep (Sharat Katariya) for noting that the food was under-salted. Sohrab dumps salt into Sandeep’s food and forces him to eat it while lobbing attacks at Chandra and making everyone else uncomfortable.

Sohrab seems particularly bothered by men in more intellectual, unmasculine careers, as he later attacks Madhavan (Ranvir Shorey) for being a professor. Sohrab owns an unspecified business with Raman and only respects men who “make” things. He has further insults for his father and other women there. The only one who seems to escape Sohrab’s bullying is the house’s caretaker, Satya (Mahesh Sharma).

None of this is necessarily grounds for murder, though it’s hard to imagine many of the guests being truly upset that Sohrab is dead. Raman is secretly planning to ask Sohrab to sell his stake in their company — with a couple of potential buyers being among the guests — but again, that’s not really a matter of life or death.

Like many whodunits, the murderer’s reveal is kind of a letdown after an entertaining journey. Then again, the killer’s identity is perhaps less important than the relationships between characters and what led up to the crime. The characters are interesting and distinct, and their conversations carry this dialogue-heavy film. It’s particularly engaging for subtitle readers like me, as there are few breaks in the chatter (hence no opportunities to look down at one’s phone and get distracted).

Kapoor stages the film like a play, confining the activity to the house. Characters spend much of their time clustered together in the living room, with a few folks puttering in the background in the adjoining dining room. One scene finds five or six characters gossiping in the small kitchen, and the scene feels convivial, not cramped.

Where things go a bit awry is that Kapoor — and thus the film — seems to have much more sympathy for Sohrab than the character warrants. Pathak performs the man as cruel, yet Kapoor as Chandra judges him to be misunderstood. “I’m not sure he’s a bully. I mean, he pretends to be,” Chandra says of Sohrab, saying he sees him a vulnerable.

Is it even possible to pretend to be a bully without actually being a bully? The hurt feelings Sohrab causes are real. Trying to explain away Sohrab’s behavior by saying he really just hates himself doesn’t undo the damage he causes.

Instead of Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa being about an unsympathetic victim who actually deserves our sympathy, I think the film is about not realizing when old friendships have run their course. If the other characters in the movie are guilty of anything, it’s of not having the courage to be the first to walk away from someone they no longer like or respect.

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Movie Review: Tu Yaa Main (2026)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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Tu Yaa Main (“You or Me“) is more than just a creepy creature feature. It has quite a lot of to say about wealth inequality, class differences, and the commodification of the individual in the age of social media.

Yet director Bejoy Nambiar employs two truly disappointing uses of the flash-forward in this film. The technique is trendy, and maybe it’s even something he borrowed from the 2018 Thai film The Pool on which Tu Yaa Main is based. Either way, there’s no reason to use the technique the way he does.

The film opens with a woman and two men flirting in a lake somewhere in southern India. One of them is eaten by an unseen animal, letting the audience know what threat the main characters will eventually face. It’s a classic monster movie setup.

Inexplicably, the next scene is a flash-forward of the two main characters Maruti (Adarsh Gourav) and Avani (Shanaya Kapoor) — who haven’t been officially introduced but whom the audience will recognize from the movie poster and trailer — arguing while trapped in a very deep, empty swimming pool. They aren’t in any immediate danger, and nothing exciting happens. The title graphic floats into frame as Avani yells for help.

What is the point of this scene? It’s like Nambiar forgot that he already had an opening sequence — one that was more interesting than two people bickering. Was he worried that people would be confused when they didn’t immediately see Gourav and Kapoor? Then he could’ve started with a pool scene and cut the animal attack sequence. It makes no sense.

The main story gets a proper chronological start after that. Avani is a popular lifestyle influencer known as “Miss Vanity,” and Maruti is an up-and-coming rapper called “Aala Flowpara.” He gets in trouble with her security guards while filming a music video in front of her mansion, and she’s amused when he flirts with her in the middle of the scuffle.

They meet again at a concert, and he follows her (and her manager and other staff members) home from the event. She hops out of her SUV and spends the night riding around with him on his motorcycle.

Privately, the pair start dating despite the huge class divide that separates them, bonding over their complicated relationships with their parents (Maruti’s dad absconded, and Avani’s are dead). Being associated with Avani is good for Maruti’s career, but he genuinely likes her. Being with Maruti affords Avani a degree of freedom she doesn’t have as “Miss Vanity,” who is as much a business as it is a persona. Her manager’s shriek when Avani discloses that she ate carbs while out joyriding with Maruti is very funny.

Both characters have people who depend on them financially, but their relationships with their dependents are quite different. Maruti’s trying to provide stability and material comfort for his mother, sister, and her infant, all of whom share an apartment with him that’s smaller than Avani’s swimming pool. Avani’s dependents are her employees. The couple’s romantic relationship comes with huge questions about its effect on both of their future earning potentials, a fact they are happy to ignore — until they can’t.

Gourav and Kapoor are both wonderful at humanizing their characters and making them more than superficial stereotypes. They communicate so much with glances that it holds your attention. A killer soundtrack of tunes largely co-written and performed by Gourav enhances the experience. The track “Jee Liya” — which Gourav sings with Lothika — is terrific.

Around 45 minutes into the movie — well after the audience has become invested in the main couple and right after an emotional sequence in which Avani tells Maruti about her parents’ tragic deaths — the movie again flashes forward to the couple stuck in the empty pool. Maruti finds a way out through a drain, but they don’t escape. No monster, no excitement.

Why?

Did Nambiar think we’d forgotten how the movie opened? Did he think we missed the foreshadowing when Avani mentioned the possibility of dying in her own large swimming pool or the significance of the scene of her parents’ drowning? Is the flash-forward supposed to benefit people who walked into the theater 20 minutes late or were scrolling on their phone?

If it’s because of the second question, well, tough luck to those viewers. Show up on time and pay attention. If it’s because of the first question, it’s an insult. How movie-illiterate does Nambiar think we are?

The empty pool finally comes into play in the second half of the film. The couple fight about their future and are sent away by Avani’s people to figure things out. Maruti’s motorcycle breaks down en route to Goa, and they get stuck at a rundown hotel that’s closing for the season. The hotel has a 20-foot-deep swimming pool with no shallow end that’s used for scuba training. They accidentally wind up stuck in the drained pool, but they aren’t alone.

Tu Yaa Main‘s pivot from relationship drama to survival thriller is well-handled and quite fun. The creature effects are very good, and the story finds inventive ways to keep our heroes imperiled. It’s especially proficient at emphasizing the physical toll on the characters. When they fall while trying to climb out of the pool, you feel it when they land on the hard tiles.

The film is otherwise so well done that it makes the two in medias res scenes extra jarring. I don’t know if they come from Nambiar’s (or his producers’) lack of confidence in himself or his audience, but the scenes are confounding distractions.

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Movie Review: Nukkad Naatak (2026)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

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It’s rare to find a contemporary Hindi social issue movie that trusts its narrative to make its point without addressing the audience directly. Gimmicks like having the main character give a speech about the issue or closing the film with slates of statistics are so overdone that audiences just tune out.

Nukkad Naatak (“Street Theater“) is an example of the good kind of meaningful storytelling. It uses the framework of a coming-of-age story about two college students to convey a sophisticated explanation of the interconnected factors that entrench poverty, sans speeches and statistics.

Best friends Molshri (Molshri) and Shivang (Shivang Rajpal) are in their final semester at college. They became friends through a street theater group Molshri runs on campus, enacting plays about societal problems she and the other members feel passionate about. Performing gives timid Shivang an emotional outlet as he struggles privately to accept that he is gay.

When the pair see the owner of the campus canteen harass his poor employee Mukund (Lalit Saw), Molshri ropes Shivang into a revenge plan. They sneak into the canteen at night and steal drinks and snacks, which Molshri gives to Mukund as compensation. The duo are caught and expelled from school.

A chance encounter with the college’s director (played by Danish Husain) gives Molshri and Shivang a possible path to reinstatement. The director recognizes that the pair are driven by a desire for justice, but that they lack worldly knowledge. He takes them to the slum where Mukund lives, and he points out the dozens of children there in the middle of the day. If Molshri and Shivang can enroll just five kids from the slum in the local school, the director will reinstate them.

The challenge is almost too easy for Molshri and Shivang to believe — until they try to accomplish it. They run into roadblock after roadblock as they begin to understand the complicating factors that keep children out of school and, in turn, perpetuate generational poverty.

As Molshri and Shivang run up against obstacles, they grow as people while they — and the audience, by extension — learn about systemic poverty. It’s basic storytelling, but it feels novel compared to the standard Hindi-cinema approach to informative entertainment. Perhaps it matters that the film’s writer-director Tanmaya Shekhar is based in New York.

Shekhar keeps the main duo’s character growth at the center of Nukkad Naatak‘s story. Molshri has always been sure of her path in life, but the college director’s challenge throws everything up in the air. The opportunity to help Mukund’s younger sister Chhoti (Nirmala Hajra) learn to read becomes an obsession, but one Molshri’s unprepared to meet. It feels like starting from scratch, unless she can figure out how to integrate who she has been with who she wants to be.

Shivang’s growth arc is the opposite. He’s never seen a way to live his truth in India, so he’s only focused on getting into a North American graduate school, assuming he’ll figure out how to be comfortable in his own skin once he gets there. Expulsion forces him to confront how he’d have to live as a gay man if he had to stay in India — a fate he’s unwilling to accept until he realizes he doesn’t have to figure everything out on his own.

As actors, Molshri and Shivang are really skilled, considering their limited professional experience. Same for young Nirmala Hajra. Even the supporting cast of students and people who live in the slums make the world of Nukkad Naatak feel believable. Director Shekhar strikes the right balance, trusting that if he can hold the audience’s attention with an entertaining story, they’ll absorb his message as a matter of course.

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Movie Review: Do Deewane Seher Mein (2026)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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Do Deewane Seher Mein (“Two Lovers in the City“) starts out very strong, with a romance between two likable but insecure young adults unfolding at its own pace. By the end, you’re left to wonder how the movie went so wrong.

The two lovebirds are Shashank (Siddhant Chaturvedi) and Roshni (Mrunal Thakur). Shashank’s embarrassment over a speech impediment that leaves him pronouncing “sh” sounds like “s” — for example, he pronounces his own name as “Sasank” — holds him back professionally and personally. Roshni’s insecurities about her looks are exacerbated by working in the fashion industry, so she always wears eyeglasses she doesn’t need, just to hide the parts of her face she’s unhappy with.

Yes, a considerable amount of disbelief must be suspended to accept that Mrunal Thakur’s beauty is in any way diminished by a stylish pair of glasses.

The two are set up by their parents, and Shashank is immediately smitten by Roshni’s forthrightness. She’s not interested in getting married and rejects his family’s proposal. He hangs out outside her work (not in a creepy way) in order to find out if he did something to cause the rejection. They have a productive conversation and start dating, though they don’t tell their overbearing families.

There’s a good balance of budding romance, misunderstandings, and emotional development to hold the audience’s interest even when things happen slowly. A solid soundtrack and some nice song montages give Do Deewane Seher Mein a comforting throwback feel, bolstered by solid performances by Thakur and Chaturvedi.

Eventually, the obstacles to the couple’s potential marriage start to feel forced — the first sign that things are about to go off the rails. Roshni and Shashank need to figure out their own issues before they can be together (and before the movie can end), and they do so in completely unrealistic ways. Shashank’s self-acceptance epiphany happens at work in front of an audience in what would have been the most uncomfortable corporate presentation of all time.

The issue with Roshni’s growth arc is that it always had to do with her glasses. Eyeglasses making someone nerdy or unattractive is an old, tired movie trope, besides being ableist and unbelievable (as in Thakur’s case).

In the case of Do Deewane Seher Mein, it’s worth focusing on glasses-wearing as a personal choice, be it for fashion, personal expression, or insecurity. All reasons are valid, and the choice of what to wear is entirely up to the wearer. This idea that Roshni is wrong for wanting to wear them is insulting. Write her character as a woman who wears long sleeves to cover a scar she doesn’t want to talk about or a wig to cover a head made bald by chemotherapy, and then insist that she can only grow if she wears a tank top or removes her wig. See how dehumanizing that is? Why is insisting that she ditch her glasses any different?

This character arc is problematic in such an obvious way that it’s a surprise to find it in a mainstream movie in 2026. Shame that director Ravi Udyawar and writer Abhiruchi Chand couldn’t see that.

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Movie Review: Toaster (2026)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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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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Movie Review: Happy Patel – Khatarnak Jasoos (2026)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos on Netflix

Comedian and actor Vir Das’s maiden directorial venture Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos (“Happy Patel: Dangerous Spy“) is underdone. Even with directorial assistance from Kavi Shastri and a screenwriting co-credit for Amogh Randive, this movie about a wannabe spy with deadly culinary skills needs more seasoning.

Das stars as the titular Happy Patel. The movie opens when he is a small child in India. His mother works as a maid for two white British spies — Roger Smith (Andrew Sloman) and Sebastian Paisley (Simon Feilder) — who also happen to be a gay couple. When Happy’s mom is accidentally killed in a shootout between the spies and Goan mafia don Jimmy Mario (Aamir Khan), the Brits take Happy back to England and raise him as their son.

The men never tell Happy about his origins. He doesn’t even know that he’s Indian. Happy wants to be a spy like his dads, but he’s more adept at cooking and ballet than espionage. However, he gets the chance to prove himself when MI7 director Kenneth Mole (Benedict Garrett) sends Happy to Goa to rescue a British scientist who’s been kidnapped and forced to work at a company that makes fairness cream.

But this isn’t a routine mission. Mole has some sort of connection to the owner of the fairness cream company: a donna named Mama (Mona Singh) who is the daughter of Jimmy Mario, who also died in the shootout that killed Happy’s mom. This is all a plan for Mama to take revenge on the son of her father’s killers.

I’m vague about the connection between Mole and Mama because I don’t really understand it. That subplot is used to make reference to British colonialism and whiteness, but it feels shoehorned into the story. I suspect the filmmaking team had a fully-formed subplot in mind, but it doesn’t translate to the screen. That’s a persistent problem in the film, unfortunately.

Happy gets to the town of Panjor in Goa and stays in the same house where his dads lived and his mother was killed, but he doesn’t learn a single thing about his mom while he’s there. It’s a weird omission. His local contacts are a teenage wiz kid named Roxy (Srushti Tawade) and a strange guy named Geet (Sharib Hashmi).

Soon after he arrives, Happy falls for Panjor’s best dancer, Rupa (Mithila Palkar). When Rupa is introduced with that label, we know one of two things: she’s either going to be a great dancer or a terrible dancer. Even with only two options, the answer is still a surprise. Rupa is terrible, and her dancing is the funniest part of the whole movie.

That’s not just because of the way Palkar depicts Rupa’s dancing deficiencies (though she deserves a lot of credit for hilarious execution). It’s because this is one of the few surprising moments in the film. Surprise is arguably even more important to comedies that it is to horror movies, but there’s very little of it in Happy Patel. Not in the way jokes are setup, how shots are edited, or in the way the plot unfolds.

As a result, Happy Patel is more amusing than it is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s nothing like the obvious sources of inspiration for a spy comedy: the Austin Powers movies and Leslie Nielsen’s Naked Gun films, which are loaded with jokes. Happy Patel relies on wordplay humor that either doesn’t translate from Hindi to English or just isn’t that funny. Imran Khan’s cameo is a baffling letdown.

It’s a shame since Palkar and Singh make the most of the material they’re given. The film deserves a ton of credit for putting so many women in plot-critical roles. The whole town of Panjor could’ve been a character in its own right, had it been more fully developed. As it is, Happy Patel feels more like a Saturday Night Live sketch with a decent skit premise that isn’t robust enough to warrant a feature-length film.

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Movie Review: Hamlet (2025)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Hamlet opens in US theaters April 10

Director Aneil Karia’s new version of Hamlet re-imagines Shakespeare’s tragedy as a modern-day business succession drama. Riz Ahmed’s bold turn as Hamlet enlivens the drama for a contemporary audience, even as it retains the play’s original dialogue.

Karia’s interpretation of a screenplay by Michael Lesslie sets the story in present-day London. Hamlet (Ahmed) returns home from abroad for his father’s funeral. His father was the owner of a firm called Elsinor, a wealthy construction company that builds high-rises. The night of the funeral, Hamlet’s paternal uncle Claudius (Art Malik) announces that he’s going to marry Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha): his brother’s widow and Hamlet’s mother.

The wedding news comes as a shock to Hamlet, and he’s even more troubled by the fact that no one seems bothered by it but him. We don’t know where Hamlet was before his father died or how much he knew about his condition, but multiple people point out that his dad had been ill for several months. His father’s mattress still bears his silhouette in the form of a deep indentation created over his long convalescence. Everyone else has had time to mourn him and make plans for what comes next. Hamlet is the only one who experiences all this as breaking news.

In this fragile state, drugs and booze are the last things Hamlet needs, but his friend Laertes (Joe Alwyn) takes him out clubbing. Buzzing and overstimulated, Hamlet stumbles into an alley and sees the ghost of his father (played by Avijit Dutt). The ghost leads Hamlet to the top of one of Elsinor’s buildings under construction where he reveals that he was murdered by Claudius via poison dropped into his ear.

Hamlet believes the ghost and intends to prove his uncle’s guilt. The only person he confides in is Ophelia (Morfydd Clark), his former flame and Laertes’ sister. She’s concerned about Hamlet’s increasing agitation but agrees to keep his supernatural encounter a secret.

Thus Hamlet sets about trying to confirm his uncle’s guilt via a convoluted plan that involves a very direct piece of performance art at the wedding. It isn’t until the night of the wedding that Hamlet finally gets to speak privately with his mother, even though she’s been shooting him pointed looks that communicate variations on “I need to talk to you” and “We’ll talk about this later.” Chaddha is an elite talent when it comes to sending messages with her eyes.

The conversation goes poorly and comes too late to prevent the tragedy that follows, particularly when family advisor Polonius (Timothy Spall) — father of Ophelia and Laertes — interrupts mid-argument. The violent climax to the story is visceral and shocking.

Lesslie’s screenplay cuts out some major parts of the play, including Hamlet’s “Poor Yorick” speech and the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Anyone who didn’t know about them before won’t miss them, as their absence makes for a quicker narrative pace and keeps the film’s runtime under two hours.

The famous “To be or not to be” monologue is shot in a really inventive way, with Hamlet delivering it while driving. The screenplay ads a nice contemporary hook by blaming Elsinor Corporation for displacing homeless people, a variation on the “something rotten in the state of Denmark” line from the play. Hamlet only realizes this after he returns home, a further indictment that he’s been neglecting his duties as heir to the family business.

Ahmed vibrates with intensity the entire film, effectively conveying Hamlet’s sense of disconnection and his declining mental state. The casting all around is solid, with Chaddha being an inspired choice for Gertrude. Even Malik is quietly good as Claudius, who’s trying to give off “just a regular guy” vibes after killing his brother and marrying his wife.

My biggest complaint about Hamlet could be due to the fact that I watched it on a digital screener and not in a theater or on Blu-ray, but it’s worth mentioning in case it’s simply how the audio is designed. It’s very hard to hear the dialogue at times. There’s a constant murmur of background noise — whether its music or chatter — that’s meant to indicate that locations are busy and populated. In order to have a private conversation under these conditions, Hamlet whispers a lot, which is hard to hear over the background noise. Not to mention, these lines were originally written to be delivered from a stage by an actor without a microphone (because they hadn’t been invented yet). They weren’t meant to be whispered. I wish I didn’t have to spend as much time adjusting the volume as I did.

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