Review of Thammar Boyfriend

#ThammarBoyfriend the title of the movie itself is very funny but the question is whether the movie too is that funny or not? The answer will be, it has comic moments but it could have been funnier. It is a comic take on a serious social issue that is ignoring elderly people in family and we are thankful to director Anindya Ghosh for bringing up such an important topic.

The movie is about Thamma , grandmother Nandini (Savitri Chatterjee) who is an old aged, wealthy  widow who lives a lonely life in a remote area. She has a big family having son (Biswajit Chakraborty), daughter (Sudipa Basu), son-in-law (Supriyo Dutta), daughter in law (Dolon Roy) and three grand children but no one lives with her. Even when she becomes seriously ill, no one comes to meet her or help her. In such a situation one day her son and daughter get a letter saying their mother is planning to remarry as she has found a new boyfriend (Abir Chatterjee). This shocking news brings the whole family to thamma as they are scared to lose all the property as a new man has entered in thamma’s life. The rest of the movie goes how the family members try to break up the romantic relationship of thamma and her boyfriend Partho.

The screenplay is very much one directional and nothing much happens, so after a point it

starts looking monotonous which is not a good sign. There are funny moments but there could have been more comedy. The dialogues too lack the punch required for comedy.

The screenplay does not take much time to introduce thamma and her boyfriend to the whole family, after that for rest of the film all the family members keep planning to separate them but sadly they do not take much effort to execute their plans, except for Rini (Arunima Ghosh) the elder grand daughter who tries to trap Partho making him fall in love with her.  Though the film’s length is only 2 hours but still towards end it seems it has been dragged for long because of lack of engaging moments. After a point the romantic track between Partho and Rini has been given more importance which has sidelined other family members.

Though it has been promoted as a comedy but rather than comedy, the emotional moments where family members realizes how they have neglected the elderly woman is more appealing. In spite of all these short comings we cannot stop praising the makers for bringing up an important issue to give love and care to the older members of our family.

As a director Anindya Ghosh has chosen a good subject but he has failed to execute it as the screenplay is weak and the characters are very cliche.

Savitri Chatterjee is no doubt a good actress but the she is a miscast here as the required

naughtiness is missing in her acting. Her comic timing is not bang on. Especially the costumes and make up looks too flashy on her and she looks very uncomfortable in those. As her boyfriend Partho, Abir Chatterjee is very natural and looks charming for whom every girl can fall in love. He has done good acting but sadly he had not much to do except for few emotional scenes with Arunima. Arunima Ghosh is in excellent form. In the crowd of actors doing loud attempt to do comedy her acting is very natural and convincing.

Both Supriyo Dutta and Biswajit Chakraborty are good actors but here they have played very cliché characters and they have done full on loud acting, their comedy does not look effortless. Dolon Roy is okay and Sudipa Basu is good in her limited scope. Lama has done good job as the Punjabi driver. He has limited scenes but he will make you laugh with his comic timing.

Over all it is movie which you can enjoy with your whole family.  It is a good attempt to give an important lesson to us that is to love and care elderly people. You can watch it once and take your grandparents too with you.