Movie review: 'Zed Plus'

In an effort to raise a few laughs, the director of Zed Plus goes a bit overboard in detailing the most absurd of plots

Zed Plus
U/A; Political satire
DIR: Chandraprakash Dwivedi
CAST: Adil Hussain, Mona Singh, Mukesh Tiwari

If a chaiwallah can become the PM, then why not a tyre puncturewallah?

Chandrakant Dwivedi (of Pinjar fame) wields the directorial baton after a long hiatus to weave a political satire borrowing heavily from the country's past and current leaders. The PM (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) appears to look like NaMo, but a closer look reveals he can't speak Hindi. He writes in English whatever he has to speak in Hindi.

In an effort to raise a few laughs, the director of Zed Plus goes a bit overboard in detailing the most absurd of plots

The film does manage to raise chuckles and has its moments, but the deliberate exaggeration for repeated comic effect ends up making the assorted characters into caricatures. Things are in-your-face and nothing is left to the audience's imagination.

Adil Hussain (Life of Pi, English Vinglish) yet again displays his acting chops as Aslam, the man to go-to for fixing punctured tyres. He gets into his character's look unlike his wife played by Mona Singh who sports a freshly scrubbed look with not a hair out of place despite the drudgery they live in.

Into Aslam's dreary life, walks in the PM, no less. He is in deep trouble and the government is on the verge of collapsing. He is advised to visit a dargah in a village in Rajasthan where Aslam resides. Call it divine intervention or a coincidence - more of the latter - just as he steps into the baba's abode, his name is cleared and the government survives. Enough reason for him to be ecstatic, an amused Aslam then begins telling him his woes of a pesky neighbour (Mukesh Tiwari) an aspiring poet. Threats from a ‘neighbour' spells security issues and Aslam finds himself grabbing headlines.

In 2010, there were political satires like Tere Bin Laden, Phas Gaya Re, Peepli (Live) and most recently we had Ekkees Toppon Ki Salaami, but Zed Plus tries to inject Bollywood must-haves like a song and dance act and loads of melodrama.

Dwivedi, in an effort to raise a few laughs, goes a bit overboard in detailing the most absurd of plots. If it had stuck to its genre of being just a political satire, without recourse to excessiveness, Zed Plus could have been got greater access.

One time watch.