Movie Review:- Chalo Let's Go....

Anjan Dutta, the director of ‘Chalo, Let’s Go’, insists that he likes working with actors and not stars. Because, as he believes, stars are difficult to handle. So, in ‘Chalo Let’s Go’, we have quite a handful, almost the whole jing-bang of the actor-clan— Parambrata, Rudranil, Ritwik, Saswata, Konineeca, Churni and Aparajita. And they are a treat to watch. The credit of throwing this aspect, mostly limited to weekly telefilms as yet, into the big-screen definitely goes to the maverick mindset of Anjan.

The junior Dutta, Neel, has been successfully running his band for quite some time now and he knows what it takes to make his music popular. If in Bong Connection it was a Tagore song tuned up to Rock music, here Rupam’s ‘Let’s Cross the Line’ sets the tone at the very beginning. And the music keeps pace all through.

Not the film, though. The second half loses balance as the script starts juggling with events and characters. The narrative decides to play musical chairs with three seats: the ‘then’, the ‘past’, and the ‘future’. And the quintessential Dutt formula—each character revealed at the end—not only burdens the director hell-bent on devising a ‘hatke narrative’ to make ‘Chalo…’ look different from his previous film (Bong Connection) of the same genre, but also keeps the viewer fidgeting for the witty moments that abound the first half.

And yet, with all that, it remains an Anjan Dutta film. He typifies his characters by their space of existence— the anglicised Bengali professor ready to criticise the Bengali mindset, or, for that matter, the NRB doctor who is easily carried away by everything he sees. However, these are the types that have already started looking repetitive.

Despite the grandiosity of the entire stretch of North Bengal from Dooars to Darjeeling and satisfactory camera work, big screen magic still eludes Anjan Dutta. The feel appears rooted more in the domesticity of a tv set than in the sprawl of the silver screen—almost certainly a hangover of Dutt’s telefilm experiences, which he needs to come out of if he decides to stick to the celluloid track more firmly.

Dutt wanted us to have few gags during the course of this film. He told us so at the beginning of the show. But this viewer had actually enjoyed his guffaws more in the ‘Bong Connection’ last year. At the risk of sounding cinematically challenged, I humbly submit that perhaps a simpler narrative towards the end would have better registered what he wanted to achieve through this film.

Source:-http://www.ilovekolkata.in/index.php/Movies/Review-Chalo-Lets-Go.html

Created by:-Sudip Ghose