After a gap of over ten years, Saurabh Shukla is back as a writer and director. ‘Dry Day’ is his new OTT offering. For this social drama with a message, he has roped in powerhouses of talent like Jitendra Kumar, Shriya Pilgaonkar and Annu Kapoor. The film was hyped even before its release. There was quite a buzz around it on the internet. It started streaming on Amazon Prime Video from December 22 onwards. Here’s all you need to know about it.
Story
In the fictional town of Jagodar, alcohol flows like water. The local politician has made alcohol so cheap that men start lining outside theka as soon as sun hits the ground. Women, on the other hand are tired of their alcoholic husbands who spend every penny they earn on liquor.The local politician has a goon who works for him on ground level; this man too is an alcoholic and his wife is also sick of it. When she gets pregnant, she tells him to quit alcohol or she will abort the fetus.This leads to series of events where he tries quitting alcohol and becomes messiah for women in town by accident.
Performances
Jitendra Kumar has got that thing in him where he can bring these small town characters alive. He tried bringing that here too. You can see man tries,tries & tries but script fails him. He fits well into role of local goon who is only enabled by his group friends. But if only script gave him more ,he would have shone. His parts dealing with withdrawal symptoms are nice & that’s all I have to say about it.
Shriya Pilgaonkar plays no-nonsense wife who does not shy away from giving back to her in-laws or relatives. Also her chemistry with Jitendra is bearable maybe that will help you look past the fact that she sticks out like a sore thumb in this entire setting.
Annu Kapoor plays the conniving politician with ease. He embodies shrewdness of politician very minutely.At one point,he is calculated.But when he feels done wrong by his successor,he gets into skin of a politician who will use every power in his arsenal to ensure victory.
Kiran Khoje plays woman who is absolutely done with her husband’s alcoholism. She fuels the movement and does great job at showing her helplessness through aggression. Apart from them no other performance is worth mentioning. Throughout a lot keeps happening but nobody stands out. Even supposed villain doesn’t.
Once upon a time, in 1998, Saurabh Shukla wrote ‘Satya’. It breaks the heart to see someone who wrote ‘Satya’ make something as insipid as ‘Dry Day’. The script tried to do too much in its attempt at being a good PSA film. The story became chaotic and dry — quite like the name suggests. It is fairly long and could have easily been cut shorter in certain places without messing up the main plot. But that was not done. So much happens in the film. There’s a Godbharai song, a Holi song, and sometimes even the sloganeering breaks into a song. While I skipped these songs whenever they popped up, I also ended up fast-forwarding many other sections of the film. It needed sharp editing and that could have helped drive the point home.
The film takes up a good issue but wants to tell us that prohibition is the perfect solution to every problem. And it’s not even subtle about it. The film tries to check all boxes to make a perfect protest/social message film that breaks its back. For example, the lead’s mother is also pregnant. They touched upon this in the beginning and only at the end of this two-hour-long saga did she resurface again — conveniently forgotten till then. Some how or rather, for his own gains, the antagonist decides to side with our protagonist but you just don’t know why he took this step and what would he get out of it.
‘Dry Day’ is supposed to be a comedy-drama but where are jokes? If I am being kind maybe 30-45 minutes had some elements of humour beyond that no joke came my way because they were just used tropes – overused tropes! Only good thing was that they didn’t show us how our lead changed his ways overnight with help from minions but such elements do not make any difference in such movies.
Apart from this, the cinematography helped establish the setting. The aerial shots and the wide shots made you believe that you were in Jagodhar. Special mention needs to be given to Protijyoti Ghosh and Javed–Mohsin for their music. They used folk songs in the film to make the setting feel more real.
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