Cast: Subodh Bhave, Sonali Kulkarni, Prasad Oak, Mohan Joshi, Anand Ingle, Nandita Dhuri, Vaidehi Parshurami, Sumeet Raghavan, & others
Director: Abhijeet Deshpande
Quick Viewpoint: While the film doesn’t quite match the expectations it still delivers as a honest account of a flawed protagonist.
What Works?
- Every actor casted in the film has delivered effectively from Sonali Kulkarni, Prasad Oak, Nandita Dhuri, Sumeet Raghavan & others. While Subodh Bhave continues his usual perfection of getting into the skin of the character & catching the right emotional tone of the character. Young actress Vaidehi Parshurami too stands out for her subtle brilliance in a challenging role.
- The dialogues! Again something that had tonnes of expectations from the audiences! Especially that dialogues that involve the theatrical backdrop.
- The entire graph of Dr. Kashinath Ghanekar’s life is very well covered in the film, at times the periodic jumps may seem abrupt but overall they feel exhaustive & the makers have managed to cover many aspects of his eventful life.
- For the audiences who have watched Dr. Ghanekar in action & have been a witness to that period this film will surely make them nostalgic, & for the younger audiences the film will introduce them to a world that once existed in our world & how it still has importance in our culture!
What Fails?
- The superficial depiction of certain scenes that were supposed to show the darker side of Dr. Ghanekar. They are so subtle (in a negative way) that many audiences won’t even get the real purpose of those scenes, & what they were meant to interpret.
- We are not really rooting for the protagonist. There isn’t real emotional connect to put us by the side of the protagonist. We are distant from the film emotionally.
- At many instances the production design of the film feels fake, & it affects the impact of the overall scene.
- Above the dialogues are mentioned in the ‘positive’ section yet sometimes they feel forceful, especially when every character put their one-liner definition of what Dr. Ghanekar is like, they feel to be forcefully added in the scheme of things & had no real context to the scenes.
Final Verdict: ‘Ani..Dr. Kashinath Ghanekar’ is a film that doesn’t really have any major flaws yet the positives of the film aren’t that impactful. The film entertains & serves the purpose of documenting the life of a flawed superstar but it lacks the magic that it promised in it’s teasers & trailers.
Rating: 3/5
