Babanchi Shala Movie Review: Noble intentions, but drab execution

• Review : Babanchi Shala (2016)
• Producer :  Vilas Mane and Umesh Nathani
• Directer : R. Viraj
• Star Cast : Sayaji Shinde, Aishwarya Narkar, Shashank Shende, Kamlesh Sawant, Chhaya Kadam, Arti More, Umesh Bolake, Milind Adhikari, Kartik Chavan, Manjula Khetri, Kavita Chavan, Shreyas Raje
• Writer : Neela Satyanarayan
• Music : Soham Pathak and Neela Satyanarayan and Kamlesh Bhadakamkar
• Review By : Rasik Tirodkar

Rating : 2/5

Babanchi Shala Marathi Movie Review:

The thought behind the film Babanchi Shala is definitely progressive. It aims to raise questions about how effective our prisons are in reforming the inmates. The basic thought behind putting a person who has committed a crime behind bars is to punish him for his misdeed and as he is serving his sentence make him realise of his guilt, so that when he has completed his term he is hopefully a reformed man. However, our penitentiary system seldom manages to achieve this. Convicts who have served their sentence are banished by the society and also their loved ones. They are not reformed or moulded in a manner that can help them to again be a part of the society they once were.

Sayaji Shinde, a Marathi actor who has developed quite a name for himself in the Telugu film industry, plays the lead role here. He is a firebrand jailor, who has a firm grip over his prison. A no nonsense kind of a man, he doesn’t shy away from some nasty treatment to the inmates if they cross the line. He doesn’t find it necessary to connect emotionally with the inmates, until the addition of another inmate played by Shashank Shende. Shende’s character has committed a crime of passion, but is a rather compassionate person with a flair for poetry. He is unbearably pained for being separated from his little girl and expresses his pain in the form of a poem. The tough jailor is moved and he can relate with the pain of a father separated from his child, as his son too, who lives in a boarding school, has got into trouble involving drugs. This makes him realise that the inmates who have committed a crime of passion are not hardened criminals and they deserve a chance to get properly rehabilitated. He then goes on exercise a plan on those lines with a select few inmates.

Now, as I have mentioned before, the film has noble intentions. But the execution is shoddy, to put it mildly. The screenplay is such a mess that you are left wondering how anyone agreed to produce it in the first place. It meanders along in the first half, with nothing much happening apart from showing the crime committed by Shende’s character. The reformation process begins well into the second half. The direction is very ordinary and doesn’t lift the film from its below par script. Shashank Shende and Sayaji Shinde try their best, but can only do that much, given how poorly written characters they have. The film tests your patience and it becomes a task to sit through the entire film.

Overall:

The intentions of the filmmaker might be noble, but the portrayal is rather drab.