Stree: For the uninitiated, it means woman in English. So, the movie ‘based on a ridiculously true phenomenon’, starts with camera panning through the narrow lanes of Chanderi. We have Chanderi ka Manish Malhotra Vicky (Rajkummar Rao), who’s a magician in the disguise of a tailor. Stree, apparently, is a ghost who comes to village during the Puja and hunts down the males in the area.
Vicky’s close buddies Bittu (Aparshakti Khurrana) and Jana (Abhishek Banerjee) get afraid of him meeting with this unknown girl who they think is Stree. But is she? Or Stree is someone else or there’s nothing but a myth. Rudra (Pankaj Tripathi) is an expert learning about the existence of Stree and helps Vicky and friends. Second half focuses on clarifying questions that are laid in first half. But throughout both the halves, one thing is common – continuous laughs.
The script of this film is like those jokes which are not very entertaining when you write them but they become funny once you get on the stage & start adding your things. To bring on this story on a big screen was a great gamble because of its very finite scope but Sumit Arora’s dialogues does the magic.
The narration dips at a point of time & things get stretched but full marks for maintaining a certain kind of happiness throughout. I loved the way how horror situations are used to make people laugh. The most innovative and laugh-provoking scenes were actually scary. The way makers churn out laughs from horror impressed me the most. Last year’s Golmaal Again was of the same genre but it didn’t utilise the ‘horror’ portion of the horredy.
Rajkummar Rao, as usual, steals the show. He’s making very monotonous for us reviewers to keep praising him. With every of his movie (Not Fanney Khan) I just keep thinking the synonyms of brilliant I’ll use for him. His portrayal of Vicky required someone only like Rajkummar Rao. He underplays his innocence very well & that’s what make this performance a memorable one.
Shraddha Kapoor looks & acts beautiful. She shares a good chemistry with Rajkummar. She just dazzles up the atmosphere with her smile. Pankaj Tripathi was badly missed in first half but he owned the second half. It seems Sumit Arora wrote some dialogues especially for Pankaj because the way he delivers, it proves his ownership over them.
Aparshakti Khurrana and Abhishek Banerjee – two salient winners of the film. Aparshakti is a natural & we’re aware about it by now. Here, too, he teases the amount of talent he holds in himself. The first half belongs to Abhishek Banerjee & he was the biggest takeaway for me.
Amar Kaushik experiments with the film & it works well for everyone. It surely could’ve been tighter & there was a lot of scope to improve the story. Amar decided to go an unconventional route & stayed honest to the genre, watch Stree for some outstanding dialogues & gut-busting performances. Justifying its genre to the core, Stree is one super-entertaining movie.
Rating: 7.5/10